Monumental Complex of Saint Anne of the Lombards

This guide to the Monumental Complex of Saint Anne of the Lombards in Naples opens with a mourner's face inside Guido Mazzoni's terracotta Lamentation, sculpted for Alfonso the Second, who commissioned the group in 1492 and gave his own features to the grieving Joseph of Arimathea. It traces Alfonso's reputation as a feared ruler, from crushing a baronial revolt in 1486 to accusations of seizing noble land and evicting nuns, and the sleepless nights that came three years after he knelt in painted clay. Look closely at his kneeling figure, framed by seven other mourners so lifelike that visitors still gasp.