The Entombment

In 1574 Jacopo Bassano painted a large Entombment for the church of Santa Maria in Vanzo in Padua. The Kunsthistorisches Museum suggests that this much smaller canvas may be a study for it.

Here the burial of Christ becomes a night scene under a dim, uncertain light, and the museum links it to the late work of the Venetian painter Tintoretto. The brush moves quickly and loosely, close to a sketch. That kind of mystical lighting belongs to the last phase of Bassano's career, when he was in his sixties and seventies. For a long time the picture was given to his son Leandro, and the museum now attributes it to Jacopo. It came to Vienna from the collection at Ambras Castle, near Innsbruck.