Ressurreição

This small panel was never meant to stand alone. Mantegna painted it around 1459 as one scene along the base, the predella, of a huge altarpiece for the church of San Zeno in Verona, a commission that took him most of three years. The Resurrection sat low on the whole structure, a compact image of Christ rising from a stone tomb at dawn. It stayed in Verona until 1797, when French troops under Napoleon took the altarpiece down and moved it to Paris. After Napoleon's defeat the tall main panels went home to the church, but the small predella scenes were kept in France. Two of them, including this one, are still in Tours. A copy now fills their place on the altar back in Verona.