Entombment Raphael (1483-1520)

A description of Raphael Santi’s painting The Posing of the Coffin

Raphael often happened to refer to Christian subjects. In reinterpreting them, he sometimes altered them so that they changed slightly, becoming livelier and fuller.

"The Position in the Coffin" depicts the moment when the body of Christ, taken down from the cross, was carried to be buried by his family and friends. Holding him on a stretched cloth, they carry him into the gardens, to where a wealthy man has provided his own private tomb for burial.

Christ’s body is lifeless. His hands and feet have bloody nail marks, his head is tilted back, his eyes are closed. The body hangs in a way a living person cannot - relaxed and yet very soft, like a sack of flour, not flesh and bone. It is carried by the disciples, supported, pulled. Their faces are sorrowful, the youngest reaches for Christ, as if wanting to touch him and not believing that he could die. None of them believes, but the body in their hands is the best proof of death.

Behind the men carrying the body go the women. Mary was walking among them, but in the picture she faints, stumbles, and is caught and supported by caring, sympathetic hands. Mary Magdalene, kneeling, not believing in death and grieving for the dead, reaches out to catch the Virgin and her very pose expresses confusion and horror. The others are calmer, holding themselves better, and somewhere far away, above the procession - awkward, mournful, afraid of the cause for which they have gathered - rise the crosses on the bald Golgotha, which is forever destined to remain in human memory as the place where God was crucified.

Raphael gives the scene a sad vitality, creating something that is intuitive to understand. At a glance one can see the sorrow and confusion of the disciples, the Virgin’s face expresses mortal agony, as if she were crucified with her son, as if all his pain were hers.

Using mercilessly bright colors, Raphael shows how frightening it is that the world continued to be, and continued to be without fading in the slightest, without becoming less festive.

God died, and no one but his disciples noticed it.