La Résurrection de Lazare

Guercino painted this in 1619, when he was still in his twenties and working near Cento, the small town in northern Italy where he grew up. Caravaggio had died less than a decade before, and his way of pushing figures out of deep shadow into raking light had spread across Italy. You can see it here in the way the pale body of Lazarus emerges from the gloom of the tomb as the others strain to lift him back to life. Guercino would soon be called to Rome and smooth his manner into something grander and calmer. This early canvas, still rough and dramatic, later travelled far from home. Vivant Denon bought it for Louis XVI in 1785, and it has hung in the Louvre since the years after the Revolution.