The Resurrection

The only signed work by Vecchietta held outside of Italy, this relief represents the Risen Christ floating in a mandorla of angel heads over his open sepulcher. He is flanked by two adoring angels standing on rocks, while others rejoice in the clouds behind him. Below him, the soldiers guarding the sepulcher are fast asleep, sprawled on the ground. The Latin inscription on the sepulcher reads, "the work of the painter Lorenzo di Pietro, known as Il Vecchietta, from Siena in the year 1472." The sophisticated Sienese artist had the habit of signing his paintings as a sculptor and his sculptures as a painter, thus pointing to the complex relationship between strands of his production before the modern concept of "art" came to straddle them. This relief was defined as a "head-sized picture" when it was displayed in the gallery of the seventeenth-century Roman cardinal Flavio Chigi, who also owned Titian's portrait of Pietro Aretino.

Source: The Frick Collection: Essential Guide, 2024 

Prince Chigi, Rome. Rodolphe Kann, Paris. J. Pierpont Morgan, London and New York. Duveen. Frick, 1916.

Source: Sculpture in The Frick Collection: Italian. Volume III. New York: The Frick Collection, 1970.