This small terracotta relief shows the body of dead Christ, supported by angels. The centre is made as a whole, surrounded by a rich decorative ornament and decorated with the symbols of the Passions and the Way of the Cross. The relief along with several other works of art was acquired for the Berlin collections from a Venetian antiquarian Francesco Pajaro by Gustav Waagen in 1841 in Venice. In Wilhelm Bode and Hugo Tschudi's 1883 catalogue, the relief was attributed to Jacopo Sansovino. Later researchers denied this attribution and started to associate the relief with Jacopo Sansovino's student, a North Italian master Gerolamo Campagna (1549-1625), who worked in Venice a lot.
It is clear that the central arrangement and the ornamental decor are structurally quite similar to the arrangement of a large-scale Campagna work The Lamentation of Christ created before 1581.
It belongs to the Blessed Sacrament Chapel of San Giuliano (San Zulian) church in Venice and is a part of the complex architectural decoration of the church. On this altar relief, the Mother of God and Maria Magdalena's figures flank the sides of Christ's body.
It is unlikely that the sculptor himself converted the large altar into a small relief, yet, the two objects' relationship remains probable. It is interesting that the figure of Christ in the terracotta relief is made in the style that resembles Michelangelo's and is known in many replicas on bronze plaquettes: Berlin, the Bode Museum, inventory number 1298; Venice, the Correr Museum, inventory number 64. To identify the real author of the relief prooves difficult.
It was previously restored in 1952 by Yelizaveta Bolotnikova (glued from fragments).