Christ in Glory

After the story ends

Christ in Glory is not an episode. The narrative of the gospels closes with the Ascension; what follows in Christian imagery — the enthroned Christ in majesty, the Christ of the Last Judgement, the Christ adored by saints — belongs to doctrine rather than to the sequence of events. Pictures of this kind often bring together figures who never met in life, because they are not depicting a moment.

Its position relative to the cycle

At the end, and outside. A cycle that runs Nativity to Ascension can be followed hour by hour; glory pictures sit after the last panel, as a statement of what the sequence was for. That is why the same church could hold both without contradiction, and why a title like this one supplies no chapter to cite.

The record

The catalogue gives Annibale Carracci, 1598, and the Palazzo Pitti in Florence, at 194 by 142 centimetres — an upright at above life size. The style is entered as Baroque and the artist as Italian; the subject fields class the work as religious. The measured palette reads as ochre. This catalogue holds six works by Carracci, spread across the dead Christ, the mocking, the empty tomb and this one — a single painter covering both ends of the cycle. No provenance note appears.