Holy Women at Christ’s Tomb

Easter morning, at the tomb

The episode is the discovery of the empty sepulchre. The gospels differ on how many women went and what they found — an angel, two figures, a stone rolled back — but they agree on the essentials: it is first light, the visitors are women carrying spices for a burial, and the body is gone. The scene is the first event of the Resurrection sequence and the only one in which the risen Christ need not appear at all.

Where it falls

Immediately after the entombment and before the appearances. Sixteen titles in this catalogue carry the word tomb, entombment or burial, and they cover both ends of the three days — the laying in and the finding empty. This entry belongs to the second.

The record

The catalogue gives Annibale Carracci, 1590, and the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg. It measures 145.5 by 121 centimetres, an upright at about life size. The style is entered as Baroque and the artist as Italian; the subject fields class the work as a group composition with both male and female figures, and as religious. The measured palette reads as brown. Six works in this catalogue are attributed to Carracci. No provenance note appears in the entry.