Christ Carried to the Tomb

On the night of 18 to 19 March 1608, Raphael's Deposition was taken out of a church in Perugia, with the friars' help, and sent to Cardinal Scipione Borghese in Rome. The Galleria Borghese sees that famous altarpiece behind this canvas, with its bearers hauling Christ's body toward the tomb. Here the body sags in a white sheet, held at the shoulders by a bearded man in a turban. The Virgin and the holy women sit back in the shadow, one of them hiding her face in her hands. The darkness and the raking light point to Caravaggio, whose Entombment was painted for a Roman church in 1603 and 1604. The museum dates the canvas to the first decade of the 1600s and lists it as possibly by Sisto Badalocchio, with Antonio Carracci as the other candidate. The painting is currently in storage.