Christ Blessing, Saviour of the World
Bernardino Luini (c. 1480-1532) · 16th century (c. 1520-1525)
Christ faces you at half length, raising his right hand in blessing and holding a transparent crystal orb in his left, the emblem of the Saviour of the World. He wears a red robe and a blue mantle lined with green, his long hair falls on his shoulders, and rays of gold radiate from his head. His face is calm, oval and slightly melancholy, the ideal type that Luini inherited from Leonardo. The fresco is smaller than its two companions and has faded, but the modelling of the face and hand, with soft shadows and no hard lines, still shows Leonardo's sfumato transposed into fresco.
The Saviour of the World was a popular devotional image in Lombardy after Leonardo's own version of the subject, and Luini repeated it several times. Like the Nativity and the Adoration of the Magi displayed with it, the fresco was detached around 1810 at the request of the Milanese nobleman Antonio Maria Litta Arese and installed in the Palazzo Litta; the Litta heirs sold the group and the Louvre acquired it in the eighteen-sixties. Look at the delicate fingers of the blessing hand.
Did You Know? The Latin inscription beneath Christ promises that whatever you ask in the name of the Father will be granted.
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