Magdalene Grieving over the Body of Christ

Böcklin had just moved back to his native Basel when he painted this wide, dark canvas in 1867. The city already owned one of the most unsparing images of the dead Christ in European art, Hans Holbein's narrow panel of the body laid out in the tomb, stiff and utterly alone, painted in Basel in the 1520s. Böcklin's picture answers it with touch. He stretches Christ across nearly a metre and a half of canvas and gives him Mary Magdalene, who leans her warm body over his and holds him. The painting was shown in Basel's Stadt-Casino in January 1868, and the city's museum commission bought it straight off the exhibition wall. It has stayed in Basel ever since, a short walk from the Holbein it seems to be answering.