Vorbereitungen für die Beerdigung (Die Autopsie)

In January 1869 the Louvre put a Ribera on view, the dead Christ laid out by mourners in heavy shadow. Cezanne was 30, living between Paris and Aix, rejected by the Salon year after year, and painting in a thick dark manner he pushed around with a palette knife. Here three figures lean over a pale body stretched on a table, a man in shirtsleeves and a woman in a red corset. The French title it has carried, The Autopsy, and the English one used in exhibitions, Preparation for the Funeral, describe two quite different events, and nothing inside the picture decides between them. It has been in private hands in Britain for decades, and was lent to the survey of his early years that travelled from London to Paris and Washington in 1988.