The Entombment of Christ (Caravaggio)

Entombment of Christ by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio is a painting from 1603 /04 release.

Topic and people

The picture shows the burial of Christ. On the right side of Mary Cleophas stretched out in despair their arms to the sky. Beside her stands with bowed head Mary Magdalene. The Virgin Mary is depicted as an old woman in nun outfit. She seems to want to hug with her arm the whole scene. In the foreground holds the diffracted Nicodemus, supported by St. John (left), the body of Christ.

Execution

The composition of the painting is remarkable. The viewer's eye slides of the hands raised in the upper right corner diagonally across the bent heads of the mourners and horizontally placed Jesus' body to shroud the lower left. The cloth hangs over the grave and seems to reach into the space of the viewer. The dark and empty background draws all the attention to the figures.

The Presentation of the Virgin Mary as a nun is unusual.

The finger of John, Christ reaches under the arms, slips right into the wound. Such macabre details are often encountered in Caravaggio.

Symbolism

The plant in the foreground symbolizes the hope of a new life.

The hanging right arm ( in Christ ) is an element that is found in reliefs from the Greco-Roman antiquity in the representations of the fallen heroes.

Historical Background

Accordance with the decisions of the Council of Trent Christian art should be comprehensible and move the viewer emotionally. This requirement seems to have the style of Caravaggio strongly influenced particularly in this painting.

The painting was painted as an altarpiece for his family chapel in the church of Santa Maria in Vallicella in Rome commissioned by Girolamo Vittrice. 1797 was brought under the provisions of the Treaty of Tolentino to Paris. Since the handover in 1817, it hangs in the Vatican Pinacoteca. In the church today depends a copy, the painters produced Michele Koek.

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