Deposition, with Saint Francis of Assisi and Another Male Saint (Stephen?)

Simone de Magistris · c. 1576

Medium

Pen and brown ink with brush and brown and red wash, heightened with white gouache, on cream laid paper, squared in black chalk, laid down on ivory board

Original size

37.2 × 23.4 cm (14 11/16 × 9 1/4 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Mannerism

This preparatory drawing by Simone de Magistris pulls you into one of devotional art's most charged moments — the lowering of Christ's body from the cross — with an intimacy that monumental altarpieces rarely achieve. De Magistris was a central Italian Mannerist working primarily in the Marche and Umbria regions, and this sheet shows him at his most considered. The layered technique — pen and ink beneath washes of brown and red, lifted with white gouache — gives the figures a sculptural weight unusual for works on paper. The presence of Saint Francis grounds the scene in Franciscan spirituality, which dominated the devotional commissions of the region in this period. The grid of black chalk squares covering the sheet is not accidental damage but deliberate method: artists used this squaring technique to transfer a composition accurately to a larger canvas or panel, confirming this drawing was a genuine working document in the creation of a finished altarpiece. Our hand-painted oil reproduction translates the luminous warmth of those original washes into the depth and permanence of oil on canvas, preserving every expressive line and devotional intensity that de Magistris committed to paper nearly five centuries ago.