The dead Christ
1663.Not on display
In this painting, following His crucifixion and descent from the Cross, the body of Christ lies upon a white cloth. On His left is a beam of the cross bearing the sign that identifies Him as King of the Jews and the skull that, according to tradition, indicated that Calvary had been the burial site of Adam. At the other end of the painting, a washbasin recalls the tradition of the arma Christi, and in the background a landscape is visible. The composition is constructed through the use of colour, applied with delicate, confident agility, an approach that proves effective in conveying the highly emotional content of this type of image. Our gaze passes slowly over the motionless body, a response facilitated by the framing effect of the white shroud and the horizontal format of the painting. The fact that the subject has been placed in the near foreground enables us to see clearly the subtle variations in colour and light with which the musculature is modelled.The subject of the dead Christ was frequent in Golden Age Spain and much loved by the faithful, who found it propitious for meditating on Jesus' sacrifice. The artistic medium in which it achieved greatest popular success, however, was polychrome sculpture. Its popularity was doubtless due to such works' three-dimensional character and the expressive possibilities of polychromed wood, which together accentuated the feeling of being present before a real body and not simply a representation. Indeed, sculptors such as Juan Sánchez Barba (1602-73) and, above all, Gregorio Fernández (1576-1636), have long been considered among the greatest creators of religious art in Spain during the Golden Age.Juan Escalante evokes these sculptural models in his placement of the body so close in the foreground and in the elongated format of the painting. He relies on Venetian and Flemish models, however, in its execution. His free application of colour caused the writer and painter Antonio Palomino to draw a comparison with Titian, when he described a painting by Escalante in the convent of the Holy Spirit in Madrid thus: But where he exceeded even himself is in an effigy of Christ our Lord deceased [...] for it truly seemed to be the work of Titian. Half a century later, the same work still hung in that convent, where the sculptor Felipe de Castro viewed it and also remarked on its similarities with Titian. It is likely that the painting they were referring to was precisely this one, which entered the Museo del Prado in 1910. Even if the subject of their comments was another, the present painting would nonetheless be equally deserving of their praise and the comparison with Titian.A possible source for the painting has been identified as a print by the Flemish engraver Schelte a Bolswert (1586-1659), which reproduced a work by Anthony van Dyck depicting the Virgin and angels lamenting over the dead Christ. This composition was much imitated by Spanish artists. The relationship between the painting and the print, however, is merely generic, and while it is possible that Escalante knew the print or some of the painted versions based on it, the differences are sufficiently great that this particular painting may be considered Escalante's own work. Furthermore, there were several sculptural works representing the dead Christ located in Madrid or nearby, including at least four credited to Gregorio Fernández, which were a more likely source of inspiration for Escalante than the print (Portús, J.: Portrait of Spain. Masterpieces from the Prado, Queensland Art Gallery-Art Exhibitions Australia, 2012, p. 126).
