In the past its status as a work by the hand of Raphael has been disputed, but it is now generally accepted as not merely designed but in large part painted by Raphael himself, no doubt with the usual workshop assistance for the easier areas. However, its quality is clearer since cleaning and restoration in 2012. Its present condition is not very good, mainly due to its change of support. After Paris, the picture (unlike many) was returned and finally re-integrated into the Spanish royal collections, later transferred to the Prado. Then it stayed in Paris from 1813 to 1822, because it was one of the paintings Napoleon took as booty during his war campaigns, and while there the painting was transferred to canvas, a practice much adopted in France during those times. In 1661 the painting was acquired by the Spanish Viceroy Ferrando de Fonseca on behalf of King Philip IV, who wanted it placed on the main altarpiece of the Royal Alcazar of Madrid chapel. It was carried safely to Sicily, and placed in Palermo, where it acquired great fame. Īs the news of this was spread abroad, the Sicilian monks sought to regain the miraculous painting, but they had to ask for the Pope's intercession to retrieve it. Here being drawn to shore, it was seen to be a thing divine, and was taken care of, being found uninjured, even the winds and waves in their fury respecting the beauty of such a work. As it was being borne by sea to Palermo, a great tempest cast the ship upon a rock, and it was broken to pieces, and the crew lost, and all the cargo, except this picture, which was carried in its case by the sea to Genoa. Painted in Rome around 1517, it was shipped by sea, but the ship had a troubled journey and finally sank. The panel was commissioned by the Sicilian monastery of Santa Maria dello Spasimo in Palermo. The concept of, and devotion to, the 'spasm' of the Virgin was fashionable, if somewhat controversial, in early-16th-century Catholicism, although in this work the Virgin has only fallen to her knees, not collapsed or fainted, as is often shown. The four Marys are depicted on the right side of the painting and towering on either side of the composition are the guards. Simon of Cyrene lifts Christ's cross momentarily and looks sternly at the guards. The man on the left in the foreground is similar to a figure in Raphael's painting The Judgement of Solomon in the Raphael Rooms in the Vatican Palace, except reversed.

All the emotion of the painting is densely crammed into the foreground and the background is similar to that of a stage set with distant groups of people and crosses. It shows the common subject of Christ Carrying the Cross to his crucifixion, at the moment when he fell and his mother suffers a spasm of agony, the Swoon of the Virgin, or 'Lo Spasimo'. It is an important work for the development of his style. 1514–16, now in the Museo del Prado in Madrid. Christ Falling on the Way to Calvary, also known as Lo Spasimo or Il Spasimo di Sicilia, is a painting by the Italian High Renaissance painter Raphael, of c.

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