El entierro de Cristo

Titian painted this Entombment in the 1520s for the Gonzaga dukes of Mantua, and its later travels read like a map of who held power in Europe. Charles I of England bought the whole Mantua collection in 1627 and took this picture to London. When Charles was executed and the monarchy fell, Cromwell's government sold off the royal art, and it passed to a Paris banker and then, in 1662, to Louis XIV. That is how a painting made for an Italian court ended up in the French crown's collection and finally the Louvre. Titian sets the scene at dusk. The body of Christ is carried to the right, pale and almost lost in shadow, the men straining under its weight while the last warm light catches their faces.