Christ Taken Down from the Cross

Early in 1657 Bourdon left Paris and moved with his whole family to Montpellier, the city in the south where he was born. Some time before he went, he painted this altarpiece for the parish church of Saint-Benoît in Paris, for the altar of its Communion chapel. That is how Guillet de Saint-Georges, the historian of the Royal Academy of Painting, told it in a memoir read to the Academy in 1692, and his account is what dates the canvas to about 1656.

The dead Christ lies on his shroud at the foot of the cross, mourned by his mother, Mary Magdalene, Saint John, an old man who may be Joseph of Arimathea or Nicodemus, and small angels. The picture stayed on its altar until the Revolution and was seized in 1793. It has suffered since. It was transferred onto a new canvas in 1826, the transfer was redone in 1974, and the paint is worn. Its top, now square, was originally arched. A red-chalk drawing of the whole composition is also in the Louvre.