The Dead Christ Mourned (The Three Maries)

The three Marys

The parenthesis in the title names the mourners. The gospels give several women at Calvary and at the tomb, and the tradition settled on three called Mary — the mother, Mary Magdalene, and a third whom the texts identify differently — which is why the phrase became a title in its own right. The subject is the mourning of the body after the deposition, and the presence of the named group is what distinguishes it from a dead Christ shown alone.

Where it falls

Between the Crucifixion and the entombment. This catalogue holds six works by Annibale Carracci, and three of them belong to this same stretch of the cycle: a corpse of Christ, the women at the empty tomb, and this mourning scene. One painter, three points in the three days.

The record

The catalogue dates the work to 1606 and gives the National Gallery, London, one of thirteen entries here in that collection. It measures 103.2 by 92.8 centimetres, close to square and under life size. The style is entered as Baroque and the artist as Italian; the subject fields class the work as a group composition and as religious. The measured palette reads as brown. Nothing on commission or ownership before London appears in the entry.