The large altarpiece canvas for the Brunelleschi-designed…

The large altarpiece canvas for the Brunelleschi-designed Capponi Chapel in the church of Santa Felicita, Florence, portraying The Deposition from the Cross, is considered by many Pontormo's surviving masterpiece (1528).

The figures, with their sharply modeled forms and brilliant colors are united in an enormously complex, swirling ovular composition, housed by a shallow, somewhat flattened space.

Although commonly known as The Deposition from the Cross, there is no actual cross in the picture.

The scene might more properly be called a Lamentation or Bearing the Body of Christ.

Those who are lowering (or supporting) Christ appear as anguished as the mourners.

Though they are bearing the weight of a full-grown man, they barely seem to be touching the ground; the lower figure in particular balances delicately and implausibly on his front two toes.

These two boys have sometimes been interpreted as angels, carrying Christ in his journey to Heaven.

In this case, the subject of the picture would be more akin to an Entombment, though the lack of any discernible tomb disrupts that theory, just as the lack of cross poses a problem for the Deposition interpretation.

Finally, it has also been noted that the positions of Christ and the Virgin seem to echo those of Michelangelo's Pietà in Rome, though here in the Deposition mother and son have been separated.

Thus in addition to elements of a Lamentation and Entombment, this picture carries hints of a Pietà.

It has been speculated that the bearded figure in the background at the far right is a self-portrait of Pontormo as Joseph of Arimathea.

Another unique feature of this particular Deposition is the empty space occupying the central pictorial plane as all the Biblical personages seem to fall back from this point.

It has been suggested that this emptiness may be a physical representation of the Virgin Mary's emotional emptiness at the prospect of losing her son.