The three Maries, arriving at the tomb in which Christ’s body was placed after the Crucifixion, encountered an angel who said to them ‘Why seek ye the living among the dead?’. The picture is a repetition of one of a series of murals painted by Stanhope in the chapel of Marlborough College, Wiltshire, in the 1870s. A friend and follower of Burne-Jones, the artist was also much affected by his experience of Italian art in Florence. He settled permanently in a villa outside the city in 1880.