The Betrayal of Christ (c. 1525): Art, History and Details

The Betrayal of Christ (c. 1525) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Valerio Belli (Italian, c. 1468–1546).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Born in Vicenza, Belli worked in Rome as a successful crystal and gem engraver, goldsmith, and medalist. His bronze plaquettes come almost without exception from crystal or hardstone carvings. This particular plaquette directly derives from a rock crystal intaglio by Belli bearing the same inscription in the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, which originally was mounted with two other oval medallions of Christ Carrying the Cross and the Entombment in the silver-gilt base of a rock crystal crucifix, also in the collection of the Vatican Library. This crucifix is generally identified as the one, according to Vasari, created for Clement VII for which Belli received a payment of 1,111 gold ducats in 1525.

Object facts

• Title: The Betrayal of Christ
• Date: c. 1525
• Creator attribution: Valerio Belli (Italian, c. 1468–1546)
• Culture: Italy
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: bronze
• Dimensions: Overall: 8.6 x 9.5 cm (3 3/8 x 3 3/4 in.)
• Collection: Sculpture
• Department: European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1983.99

Collection credit

Gift of Dr. Raymond N. Ferreri

Further reading listed by the museum

• Turner, Evan H. "Year in Review for 1983." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 71, no. 2 (February 1984): 38-79.
• De Winter, Patrick M. "Recent Accessions of Italian Renaissance Decorative Arts, Part II." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 73, no. 4 (April 1986): 142-82.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.