Eugène Delacroix - The Entombment, after Rubens 1836
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The Entombment, after Rubens 1836
71x53cm oil/canvas
Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, United States
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From Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha:
The Entombment reflects the narrative power that Delacroix admired in the works of Rubens. Bathed in light, the naked, dead Christ lies sprawled on a block of stone before the entrance to the cave that will serve as his sepulcher. Delacroix's treatment of Christ's anguished expression and limp limbs proclaims the pathos of the scene. Surrounding Christ are grief-stricken onlookers: Saint John struggles to support Christ's torso, Mary Magdalene kneels at his feet and gazes upon his body, and Mary, his mother, looks up to heaven, at once imploring divine mercy and foreshadowing the resurrection. The group of figures is organized in a Baroque compositional pattern: a diagonal thrust into the picture following the axis of Christ's body and then an abrupt change of direction followed by a second diagonal composed of figures receding into the distance.