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Christ with Joseph of Arimathea
Giovanni Girolamo Savoldo (Italian, c. 1480–after 1548)
c. 1525
- Medium
- oil on wood
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- Framed: 134.6 x 221 x 12.7 cm (53 x 87 x 5 in.); Unframed: 105 x 191.8 cm (41 5/16 x 75 1/2 in.)
- Culture
- Italy
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, European Painting and Sculpture
- Credit line
- Gift of the Hanna Fund
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
After the Crucifixion, Joseph of Arimathea obtained permission to bury Christ’s body in Joseph’s own tomb. Aside from an amorphous, cloudy sky, Savoldo eliminated the background entirely and reduced the narrative to two monumental figures, brought to the front of the picture plane. These qualities surely had a great impact on Caravaggio, who initially trained in Northern Italy, where Savoldo spent his career. This work originally hung over a large altarpiece, which explains the unusual perspective, the panel’s horizontal shape, and the figures’ position above the viewer.
