Jim Peake
Head of Department
Lot 1
A remarkable façon de Venise reverse-painted glass picture, late 16th century
19 November 2025, 10:30 GMT
London, Knightsbridge£4,000 - £6,000
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A remarkable façon de Venise reverse-painted glass picture, late 16th century
Hall-in-Tyrol or Innsbruck, cast in rectangular form, painted with 'The Deposition' or 'The Descent from the Cross', depicting four disciples standing on two ladders wither side of the cross lowing the lifeless body of the crucified Christ, the Three Marys or Holy Women and the Virgin on the ground below, hills and rooftops of buildings visible beyond a wall in the distance, in an ebonised frame, visible image 20cm x 15.7cm
Footnotes
This dynamic representation of The Descent from the Cross is an engraving of circa 1520-30 by Marcantonio Raimondi, after a lost drawing by Raphael of circa 1505-07, presumably for an unexecuted painting. The glass panel is a reversed or mirror image of the print, and of course this is to be expected as the scene was painted on the reverse. The painter closely copied the figures from Raimondi's engraving but used much licence with the landscape background.
There is convincing circumstantial evidence that these so-called 'Venetian' pictures and a number of related reverse-painted dishes originated in Hall-in-Tyrol. Unlike later glass pictures, these panels were individually cast or formed rather than cut from larger panes of glass, resulting in their irregular edges and uneven striated surfaces, see the Ryser Collection catalogue, Reverse Paintings on Glass (1992), pp.15-17, where a related panel depicting a slightly different version of The Descent from the Cross attributed to Hall-in-Tyrol is illustrated, p.16, fig.7. Compare also to the examples from the Wolfgang Meixner Collection sold by Bonhams on 3 November 2016, lots 23-25, the example painted with The Temptation also after an engraving by Raimondi sold by Bonhams on 20 November 2019, lot 4, and that painted with The Annunciation sold by Bonhams on 24 November 2024, lot 1. Further 16th century panels are in Corning Museum of Glass and the Museo Vetrario in Murano.