TO UNDERSTAND THE SCENE

The deposition corresponds to the descent of Jesus’ body from the cross but the positions of the body and of the characters are those of the entombment.

The body of Jesus can be placed on his mother’s knees. She is alone or simply surrounded by John and Mary Magdalene. She is called the Virgin of Pity or Pietà. This tragic and particularly moving scene is probably derived from the Virgin and Child, for Jesus dead is sometimes the size of a child and his mother seems to rock him.

Entombment; Juan de JUNI; 1554; polychrome wood; National Museum of Religious Carvings, Valladolid, Spain

Web Gallery of Art

The Gospel according to Matthew, chapter 27

When the even had come, there came a rich man of Arimathaea, named Joseph, who himself was also Jesus' disciple: He went to Pilate and begged the body of Jesus. Then Pilate commanded the body to be delivered. And when Joseph had taken the body, he wrapped it in a clean linen cloth, And laid it in his own new tomb, which he had hewn out in the rock: and he rolled a great stone to the door of the sepulchre, and departed. And there was Mary Magdalene, and the other Mary, sitting opposite the sepulchre. (Matthew 27:57-61)

The Gospel according to John adds in chapter 19

And there came also Nicodemus, who at first came to Jesus by night, and brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about a hundred pounds. (John 19:39)

Comment

The scene of the burial of Jesus’ body is particularly important for two reasons. It is the death of a real man and not a divine spirit taking a human appearance, and the representation of the entombment precedes the scene of the empty tomb, the sign of the Resurrection.

The Entombment

The body of Christ is carried

The body of Jesus is laid down at night

Meditation before the body

Two different conceptions of the tomb: the dug-out vault and the sarcophagus; only the former corresponds to the text.

The deposition on the gravestone.

In the Renaissance, some entombments were represented with the corpse of Jesus placed on a slab of stone; he is alone or with Mary. The work sometimes takes the form of a lesson of anatomy.

Pietà is the name given to the group formed by Mary bearing the body of her son. On the right, the movement is obviously inspired by the Virgin and Child.

The burying of the dead is one practice that has nothing specifically Christian but Christianity has given to it a new dimension as the expectation of the resurrection.

It is to be noted that the forms of burying have changed and that the dead person, at first wrapped in his shroud and laid down in a sarcophagus or placed in a niche as in the catacombs, has then been put in a closed coffin and buried in the earth.

The return of the practice of cremation has at first been considered as anti-Christian but nowadays it has no particular signification particularly in Anglo-Saxon countries.