After restoration, the Pietà of Luco has returned to shine in the Palatine Gallery

After restoration conducted by theOpificio delle Pietre Dure, the colors of Andrea del Sarto ’s Pietà di Luco have returned to their original splendor, and the work has been relocated to the Apollo Room of the Palatine Gallery of the Pitti Palace in Florence, in the mid-17th-century Baroque setting in which Grand Prince Ferdinando wanted it.

Painted by Andrea del Sarto between 1523 and 1524, the panel owes the name by which it is commonly known to the Camaldolese monastery of San Pietro in Luco del Mugello, where the painter was lovingly received by the nuns, so much so that, as Vasari recounts, “he set to work with great love.” According to the Arezzo historian, the altarpiece was commissioned from him by the abbess, the Florentine noblewoman Caterina di Tedaldo della Casa.

Figures crowd around the bloodless, bruised body of Christ to which is placed the chalice with paten, alluding to the Eucharist. Closing the scene of mourning are Saints Peter and Paul. Vasari, a great admirer of Andrea’s painting, reserves an exemplary commentary for this work: “figures so vivid that it seems they really have spirit and soul[...] in St. John one glimpses the tender dilezzione of that apostle, and the love of Our Lady in her weeping, and an extreme sorrow in the face and attitude of Our Lady, who seeing Christ, who seems really of relief in flesh and dead, makes for compassion stand all stupefied and bewildered St. Peter and St. Paul.”

How did this masterpiece come to Florence? We owe Cardinal Carlo de’ Medici, in 1630, an initial attempt to obtain the painting from the nuns to enrich his own collection. But the latter, sources say, strenuously opposed it, and the cardinal had to surrender. The venture succeeded in 1782 to the Grand Duke of Tuscany Pietro Leopoldo, who paid 2,400 scudi to be able to exhibit it in the Uffizi Tribune. The operation recalled the “modus operandi” of Grand Prince Ferdinando de’ Medici, who was in the habit of ’compensating’ the altars of the churches from which he took works: in fact, Pietro Leopoldo had the painter Santi Pacini make a faithful copy of the painting, which was inserted into the original frame and placed on the altar in Luco. In 1795 the director of the Gallery, Tommaso Puccini sent the Pieta to Palazzo Pitti, in the Palatina Gallery, in exchange for the Madonna of the Harpies by the same author, now in the Uffizi. This is how Puccini justified his choice: “the Pieta is a showy, imposing picture, and full of every exquisiteness, and for the paintings of Pitti it is convenient that their beauty should be manifested even to the eyes of the less fine connoisseur.” Transferred to Paris in 1799 by Napoleon’s troops, the great altarpiece returned to Florence in 1815.

Photo: Uffizi Galleries

After restoration, the Pietà of Luco has returned to shine in the Palatine Gallery

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