The Washing of the Feet

The work is one of a group of two rock crystals.
See also Inv. AP I 4

The two rare and precious rock crystals were engraved by the Vicenza goldsmith Valerio Belli, an esteemed artist who was very much in demand among the most illustrious patrons of the sixteenth century, a friend of Michelangelo and Raphael, celebrated by Vasari in his Lives and now unfortunately almost forgotten. The fact that his engravings were taken from drawings by other artists and not creations of his own meant that he was considered just an imitator, so that his art gradually lost value over the years, being relegated to the realm of craftsmanship. But engraving rock crystal was a refined and difficult operation carried out on an extremely fine material, hard and fragile at the same time, which was worked from the reverse, hollowing out the surface with small drills.

The two items in the Vicenza Civic Art Gallery were originally part of a much larger group that has now been dismembered; Belli made it for Pope Clement VII and it was the result of long and patient work, on which the sculptor was engaged for more than ten years: he certainly began working on the whole order in 1533 and completed it in 1545, when Paul III Farnese had become Pope.

In these compositions, masterpieces of the art of engraving, the characters are crowded in the foreground, against a background of architectural structures in classical style, around the figures of the protagonists. In the first, Christ is about to wash the feet of Saint Peter, while in the second Christ, weighed down by the cross, is walking to Calvary, preceded by some soldiers and by the two thieves, half-naked and with their hands tied behind their backs.

The layout of the compositions, extremely moved and agitated, is enlivened by the effects of transparency and light offered by the precious material.