The Angel on Christ's Sarcophagus

Fragment of a sketch representing The Women at the Tomb. It was not only around 1817 that, as a graphic artist, Thorvaldsen was preoccupied with the motif of the women going out to Jesus’ tomb on Easter morning. He returned to it several times and was always focussed on the women’s meeting with the angel dressed in white, which according to St Matthew had overturned the stone and sat on it. Thorvaldsen consistently shows the stone as a carefully carved sarcophagus.