The Dead Christ Supported by Two Angels

On the edge of the tomb Marco Palmezzano painted a small slip of paper, as if stuck to the stone, with his name and the year 1510. Painters in Venice were fond of that little illusion, the cartellino, and the subject comes from the same world, the dead Christ held upright in his tomb as an image for prayer. Two child angels with dark wings hold him up, one in yellow, one in red. His hands turn outward to show the nail wounds, and a thin line of blood runs from his side. Behind them the view splits in two, rough cliffs on one side and open sky with blue mountains on the other. The Louvre bought the panel from a Venetian dealer in 1863, and it hangs in the second bay of the Grande Galerie.