Grablegung Christi

Moretto spent almost his whole career in Brescia, in northern Italy, a little apart from the busier art world of nearby Venice. He painted this around 1526, early in that career. The dead Christ has been taken down from the cross, and three mourners hold his body upright against a plain marble tomb: his mother, John the Evangelist, and Mary Magdalene, each pressing close, turning and clinging in grief. Moretto worked in a sober, restrained way, cool grays and muted browns for the living set against the pale, drained flesh of Christ. There is little drama of gesture beyond the weight of the body itself, which the mourners can barely support. It was meant as an altarpiece, a place to stop and pray on the days that recall Christ's death.