The Entombment of Christ

Caravaggio's The Entombment of Christ, painted in 1603–1604 for the Chiesa Nuova in Rome, is a towering achievement of Baroque painting and one of the most emotionally overwhelming religious images ever created. Six figures are tightly grouped around the body of Christ at the moment it is about to be laid upon the anointing stone: Nicodemus and the young John bear the weight of the body, while the Virgin, Mary Magdalene, and Mary of Cleophas gather behind in varying attitudes of grief. Most striking of all is the figure of Mary of Cleophas, whose arms are flung upward toward heaven in an almost violent gesture of anguish.\n\nCaravaggio's signature chiaroscuro is deployed here with supreme mastery: the dead body of Christ, pale and heavy with the weight of lifeless flesh, is lit as though from a source just beyond the picture plane, its luminosity contrasting with the dark, undefined background. The composition is built on a powerful diagonal that carries the eye from the outstretched hand of Christ down through the rocky slab toward the viewer below, implicating the observer in the mourning. The painting was universally admired from the moment of its installation, and has been copied by Rubens, Fragonard, Géricault, and Cézanne among others. Removed to Paris in 1797 during the Napoleonic campaigns, it was returned to Rome in 1816 and installed in the Vatican Pinacoteca, where it remains.