Hand-painted in oil
About this Artwork
The mourning as a composition problem
The Lamentation is the interval between the body coming off the cross and going into the tomb. Nothing in it advances the story; the gospels do not narrate it. What it offers instead is a group of mourners arranged around a horizontal body, which is why the subject attracted painters who thought in terms of arrangement rather than incident.
Where it falls in the cycle
Friday evening, after the Deposition and before the Entombment. Twenty-five titles in this catalogue name a Lamentation. The neighbouring episodes are far scarcer here — four Depositions and five Entombments — which shows how much of the Passion's weight the tradition placed on the pause rather than on the movements around it.
The catalogue entry
The record names Nicolas Poussin, dates the canvas to 1629, and places it in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich, Germany, one of ten works in this catalogue recorded there. It measures 101 x 145 cm, horizontal, the proportion the subject requires. No style is entered in the tags; the artist is recorded as French. The subject fields class the work as a group composition and as religious. The measured palette reads as ochre and red. The entry names no patron and no earlier collection, and this page adds neither.
Sources
1 references- Poussin, Nicolas — Getty ULAN
French painter and draftsman, 1594-1665, active in Italy
