Collection: Entombment

ARTIST: Museum Religious Art Classics

ARTWORK NARRATIVE:

Artist: Moretto da Brescia – c. 1554

Conceived as a meditation on mortality, this altarpiece was painted just before Moretto’s death for the oratory of a confraternity in his hometown. Key to its message of loss and hope is the striking contrast between the somber faces of the figures and the dawn light playing across the sky and landscape. Members of the group would have meditated on the moments following Christ’s death and thought of the piercing grief of his mother and other attendants, but also of the promise of life to come. When it entered the museum, its gravity and nobility reminded one curator of the music of Bach or the poetry of Milton.