The Entombment (or Christ being carried to his Tomb), by Michelangelo

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The Entombment (or Christ being carried to his Tomb), by Michelangelo
The Entombment (or Christ being carried to his Tomb), by Michelangelo

This is one of perhaps only three surviving panel paintings by the great Florentine artist Michelangelo. It shows Christ’s body being carried to his tomb. It was probably made for a funerary chapel in the church of S. Agostino, Rome – commissioned in 1500 and left unfinished when Michelangelo returned to Florence the following year.

Saint John the Evangelist may be the figure on the left carrying Christ’s body on strips of winding cloth helped by one of the Three Marys. They carry him up a staircase to his tomb in the rocks. The man behind Christ is either Joseph of Arimathea or Nicodemus. Another of the Three Marys, possibly Mary Magdalene, sits on the ground. The space left empty on the right was probably intended for the kneeling figure of the Virgin Mary. The other female figure on the right is probably another of the Three Marys, Mary Salome.

Like the also unfinished Manchester Madonna, The Entombment offers a fascinating insight into Michelangelo’s working methods. While the Manchester Madonna is painted in egg tempera on panel, this picture is painted in oils, revealing Michelangelo’s unusual approach to the medium. Michelangelo painted each figure in full before moving on to the next, as though he were painting in tempera, a technique that he had learned in Ghirlandaio’s studio. As in the Manchester Madonna, some colour areas were left entirely untouched whereas others are near to completion. This approach is not often seen in oil painting of this date in Italy – for example, in oil paintings left unfinished by Raphael, we find the whole composition worked up evenly and each colour area left in a similar state of incompleteness.

Instead of creating relief by building up transparent glazes over an opaque underlayer of paint, as was the oil painting technique used in Venice and the Netherlands, Michelangelo modelled his forms by blending his shades into one another while they were still wet. As with his tempera technique, which also creates an opaque effect, Michelangelo added white to create a tonal range and used glazes only for the deepest shadows or specific colour effects.

At the top right he scraped away the dark paint of the rock to suggest the two figures moving back the stone that closes the tomb, removing material just as he did when sculpting in marble. He employed a similar technique of scraping away the paint when working on the Manchester Madonna.

Painted about 1500-1501.

National Gallery, London (NG790)

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Taken on: December 16, 2023
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