Christ Carried Down to the Tomb

This work is related to Christ's Entombment, a work from 1848 now in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and is known as one of the 1859 Salon paintings when Delacroix also displayed The Abduction of Rebecca (Musée du Louvre, Paris) and Christ Carrying the Cross (Mainz Municipal Museum). This work reflects the artist's sense of tragedy as he suffered from illness and the deaths of his friends. The work's deep religiosity relates to the character of his revered Rembrandt. According to René Huyghe, the motif of steps moving from above ground to below ground appears in several works by Rembrandt, and the S-shaped form provides the work with appropriate compositional movement. Baudelaire made the following comment regarding this painting in his critique of the 1859 Salon, "There is no finer expression of this theme than Christ Carried Down to the Tomb (originally referred to as The Entombment of Christ). It would take a Titian to create such a work. He would use a different method in the creation of his composition but, yes this is true. However, I much prefer this work . . ." (Source: Masterpieces of the National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo, 2009, cat. no.59)