Entombment of Christ

Despite, and perhaps partly because of, all its roughness of execution, the painting is a dramatically powerful representation of the Entombment of Christ. The fragile, tormented body, taken down from the Cross, is held by Joseph of Arimathea, who bends tenderly over it. Mary Magdalene presses one of Jesus’s hands to her face; in the other hand, the convulsion of the death agony has not yet relaxed, as if he were still clutching the edge of the tomb.

The painter presents the figures half-length and in close view, reducing their number to the bare minimum and omitting all superfluous accessories, decorative motifs, and landscape background, concentrating solely on the human drama. The handling of line is broken and rugged, the treatment of detail broad and summary. Mary’s voluminous veil casts a mournful shadow over her face, while tense, surging, and fractured lines define the burial shroud and the broadly knotted loincloth. The areas of green, red, and white clash harshly with one another. On the large sheet of paper painted on the edge of the tomb, the artist’s signature must originally have been visible.

Vilmos Tátrai, 1993.

Provenance

Collection of Arnold Ipolyi

Bibliography

• Cséfalvay Pál, szerk.: Keresztény Múzeum, Esztergom. Budapest, 1993. 239-240, kat. sz. 123 (Tátrai Vilmos)
• Viroli, Giordano: La Pinacoteca Civica di Farli. Farli, 1980. 90.
• Farli, 1938. 120-125;
• Mucsi 1975, 49, V.ö. Becherucci, L.: Baldassare Carrari. In: Mostra di Melozzo e dél Quattrocento romagnolo (katalógus).
• Boskovits-Mojzer-Mucsi 1964, 92;