Christ Carrying the Cross
by LIGOZZI, Jacopo, Oil on canvas, 136 x 102 cm
This painting is dated 1604, a period in which the artist concentrated on scenes from the Passion, a theme that would continue to occupy him into the following decade. Following the demise of Mannerism, Ligozzi selected more somber subjects to appeal to the Florentine Counter-Reformation, the verisimilitude of his scenes and his intensely expressive figures setting him apart from the ostentatious Baroque style fashionable in contemporary Florence.