Il Cristo morto di Giovanni Bellini alla National Gallery di Londra: vicende collezionistiche e fortuna critica tra Otto e Novecento | Giovanni Bellini’s Dead Christ at the National Gallery, London: Collecting History and Critical Reception in the Ninetee

Abstract

A annotation by Giovanni Morelli and Gustavo Frizzoni, found in a late nineteenth-century manuscript with the first catalogue of paintings in Italy, reveals the existence of a Dead Christ on wood attributed to Giovanni Bellini. At the time, this painting was kept in a private collection in Mantua, before arriving at the National Gallery in London, where it is now located. Through unpublished documents, this contribution aims to reconstruct the entire story of the discovery of the painting and its sale by its owner, Cesare Menghini, who would soon become mayor of Mantua. Despite its precarious state of conservation, Bellini’s Dead Christ was purchased in 1889 by Jean Paul Richter on behalf of the German-born collector Ludwig Mond. This confirms the short circuit between conservation and the market of art in which, at the end of the 19th century, Morelli and some of his admirers, including Richter, played a leading role in the sale of several masterpieces and their departure from Italy.