Bastian Eclercy
Bastian Eclercy is the Head of Italian, French and Spanish Paintings before 1800 at the Städel Museum in Frankfurt and a specialist in Italian Renaissance and Baroque painting. He was one of the main contributors to the 2009/10 Städel exhibition catalogue “Botticelli: Likeness, Myth, Devotion” where he published this painting. Eclercy has curated several exhibitions, e.g. “Maniera: Pontormo, Bronzino and Medici Florence” (2016).
Botticelli's 'stunning and puzzling' Man of Sorrows
The painting, sold last week at Sotheby's for $45.4m, was listed among workshop and studio pictures in Ronald Lightbown’s 1978 catalogue of Botticelli’s work, before being included as an autograph work in an exhibition at Frankfurt's Städel Museum in 2009. Here, in a pair of opinion pieces, two Renaissance experts give their contrasting views on its attribution