Lamentation over the Body of Christ

Poussin was a Frenchman who moved to Rome in 1624 to steep himself in antiquity, and by the late 1620s that study soaks into even his religious pictures. He places the mourning over the dead Christ in a bare ancient burial ground, a stretch of old stone under an open sky. He wanted the scene to look historically true, so he built its world out of ancient Rome as much as out of the Gospel account. The figures lock into a firm triangle: Mary fainting on one side, John twisted in grief on the other, two small winged children crying almost like infants. Behind them the landscape opens out flat and unhurried, going calmly about its day while the mourning fills the front of the canvas.