Descent into Limbo (Mantegna)

Descent into Limbo is a small tempera and gold panel, measuring 38.8 by 42.3 centimeters, painted in 1492 by the Italian Renaissance master Andrea Mantegna, depicting Christ's descent into Limbo to free the righteous dead before his Resurrection. Considered lost for centuries, the panel resurfaced and was authenticated in time for a major 1992 exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts in London; it had previously belonged to the Barbara Piasecka Johnson Collection in Princeton, New Jersey, and was sold at auction in 2003 for 25.5 million dollars after negotiations to sell it privately to New York's Frick Collection fell through. A missing strip from the top of the composition was later identified in a panel at the Accademia Carrara in Bergamo that had been catalogued as a separate studio work called Resurrection, and scholars confirmed the two panels once joined by matching a small painted cross that spans the join. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/