Dead Christ Supported by Three Angels

Palma painted the dead Christ held up by angels more than once in these years, in small pictures meant for private prayer rather than a church wall. This is one of them, from about 1612. Three angels take the weight of the body and hold it toward us against a dark, plain ground with nothing else in it, no landscape, no tomb, no crowd. The face still carries the strain of the crucifixion. Everything is kept close and quiet, the body brought right up to the surface, so a single person praying before it has only that to look at. He treated the same subject in other small versions around these same years, one of which is now in Vienna.