The Body of Christ Held by Angels

The painter's name is written on the lid of the tomb, but not in any alphabet a reader in Ferrara used. Tura spelled out TURA in letters of his own invention, ornamental and strange, the kind of exotic-looking script Italian painters of his day used to suggest the ancient East. Above it the dead Christ is held upright at the edge of his sarcophagus by angels. It is an image made for prayer rather than a scene from a story, and the museum dates it to between 1460 and 1470. The panel has had a hard life. At some point its paint layer was lifted off the wood and laid onto canvas, and later it was transferred back onto a panel again, the kind of drastic rescue restorers once used on flaking or worm-eaten boards. The imperial collection in Vienna acquired it in 1857.