DEPOSITION OF CHRIST. - By this name is meant the scene depicting the removal of the dead Jesus from the Cross before his burial. The Gospels narrate that on the evening of the Friday of "Parasceve," after Jesus expired, the noble Joseph of Arimathea went to the Roman procurator Pilate and asked him for the body of Jesus in order to bury it. Pilate, amazed at so rapid a death on the cross, granted the corpse to Joseph. The Arimathean "took it down" (Mk. and Lk.) or "took it away" (Jn.) from the Cross, with the help of Nicodemus, who had come with about 100 pounds of myrrh and aloes, embalmed Jesus, wrapped him in the shroud he had bought, and placed him in the tomb hewn out of the rock (Mk. 15:42-46; Lk. 23:50-54, have almost the same text; Mt. 27:57-60; Jn. 19:38-42 is the only one that mentions Nicodemus). It may be supposed that Joseph with his own hands removed Jesus from the Cross and carried the corpse to the tomb.
ART
The scene of the D. of C. from the Cross appears in Christian art associated with the representation of the Crucifixion (v.), toward the beginning of the 5th century (the Perm cup, the Gospel of Rabbula). One must, however, reach the 9th century for artists, spurred by the desire for historical truth, to represent the scene of the D. in its realism and include it in the entire figurative cycle of the Passion. By
D., however, one must understand, in strict iconographic terms, the moment in which the body of Jesus is lowered from the Cross to be wrapped in the shroud and enclosed in the tomb. Not always, in fact, did artists adhere to this precise moment, and often they extended the episode to the immediately subsequent one of the lamentation of the Virgin, of the Magdalene, of John and of the pious women over Christ already deposed from the Cross. From this representation there later derived the other, even more concise one, of the Pietà (v.).
In the history of art this distinction was not always taken into account, and the various iconographic motifs of the final moments of the Passion were often all designated under the generic name of D.
In the East it appears in the frescoes of the rock churches of Cappadocia (Tokale-Göreme), and the scene is reduced to essentials: Christ is lowered from the Cross and his body is supported by Nicodemus (John 19:38 ff.); the Virgin, St. John, and the pious women assist at the scene, petrified in their gestures of sorrow and without participating directly in the action.
Often the Virgin is depicted in the act of kissing one of Jesus' hands abandoned along the side of the Cross, and John on the other side repeats Mary's gesture (katholikon of Mount Athos). Sometimes, however, the Virgin also participates in the action and supports in her arms the body of her Son, helped by Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea, while John and the pious women remain sorrowing and mute in their hieratic fixity (peribleptos of Mistra).
In the West the iconographic theme is first linked to the motifs of Byzantine art, and knowledge of it, determined above all by the importation of Eastern codices, broadens ever more from the 7th century onward and lasts throughout the Romanesque period. In Rome the scene of the D. is offered by the frescoes in S. Urbano alla Caffarella (11th century) and in S. Giovanni ante portam Latinam (late 12th century); there the D. is carried out by St. John and by Joseph of Arimathea, a motif repeated in a miniature of cod. lat. 123 of the Biblioteca Angelica. In the mosaic cycle of Monreale in Sicily (12th century), the three Marys appear bearing two vases of balms. Also noteworthy is the D. in ivory, now in Paris, of the 13th century (A. Venturi, II, p. 614 and fig. 442). Thus, when Antelami depicts the D. in the bas-relief of the cathedral of Modena, which is moreover his first work of certain dating (1178), the Byzantine schema is expanded with the inclusion of the Church and the Synagogue personified at the foot of the Cross, and to the pious women enclosed in their sorrow there is added, on the opposite side, the scene of the soldiers casting lots for the Redeemer's garment. The Virgin, standing apart, is bowed in her sorrow.
In the D. of the cathedral of Volterra, by an artist perhaps Lombard, a follower of Antelami, and in that of the cathedral of Tivoli, also descended from the same stylistic orbit, the motif of the katholikon of Mount Athos returns. The body of Jesus is supported by Joseph of Arimathea, and the Virgin and John stand at the sides of the Cross. At Volterra they hold Jesus' abandoned hands; at Tivoli, with greater hieraticism and with a purer derivation from Byzantine iconography, they stretch their hands toward Christ to indicate the way of salvation and the final act of the tragedy of Golgotha.
The scene of the D. represented on the pulpit of the old S. Piero Scheraggio, now in S. Leonardo d'Arcteri, a fragmentary work by anonymous Tuscan sculptors of the second half of the 12th century, also refers back to Byzantine canons. Greater dramatic quality of attitudes is found in the fresco of the end of the century, in the crypt of the cathedral of Aquileia, where the Virgin supports the reclining body of Jesus while the pious women gather, slender, in a contracted gesture of sorrow, and John brings the Redeemer's garment to his lips. In Venice, in the church of the SS. Apostoli, a mosaic of the early 13th century instead shows itself akin to the motifs widespread in the painting and sculpture of central and southern Italy (the door of Barisano at the cathedral of Trani, Corale, XI, L. 5 of the Biblioteca Estense in Modena, and later the D. by Nicola Pisano and assistants in the lunette on the facade of the cathedral of Lucca, etc.).
In the 14th century, with Giotto (Padua, Scrovegni Chapel) the scene changes: to figure the desolate nature of Golgotha there is only a bare tree atop a rock, which, following a diagonal, leads the eye to the center of the drama, shifted toward the lower left. The body of Jesus is reclining, supported by the loving embrace of Mary; the pious women in their motionless structures bend over it, and John, his arms open in a gesture of supreme plasticity, synthesizes the dramatic apex of sorrow. Changed accents in the changed compositional schema humanize the scene, and Giotto's iconographic motif, which is moreover the aforementioned one of the lamentation over the dead Christ, remains one of the highest manifestations of art, which would find a vast following throughout all the succeeding centuries (see also PIETÀ).
Simone Martini, in the lost polyptych in the museum of Antwerp, and Pietro Lorenzetti, in the fresco of the lower church of Assisi, instead take up the preceding motif of the body of Jesus not yet completely detached from the Cross and folded over the arms of the participants. Giotto di Stefano, known as Giottino (D. of the Uffizi), returns to the Giottesque schema, but replaces the spare and plastic landscape with the gold ground against which the Cross stands out bare.
Throughout the 14th and 15th centuries the various iconographic motifs of the D. alternate. In the 16th century the two principal themes are taken up again: that of the lamentation over Christ, and the other which adds to the descent of Jesus from the Cross the fainting of the Virgin, both scenes grouping several figures. While the first schema draws its origin from medieval tradition, the other links back to Byzantine painting itself in an ever more synthetic and unified vision.
Of the first motif, admirable examples are the D.'s of Signorelli in the cathedral of Cortona, of Correggio in the Pinacoteca of Parma, of Tintoretto in the Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice, of Carracci in the Museo Nazionale of Naples, down to the many D.'s of Van Dyck. Of the second motif, a first situation is the one begun by Filippino Lippi in 1505 for the painting of the church of the Santissima Annunziata in Florence, today at the Uffizi, and which was brought to completion by Andrea d'Assisi, followed by the other of 1515-16 that Signorelli left at Umbertide. From these two and from the other by Sodoma, painted after 1508 for the church of S. Francesco in Siena and today in that Pinacoteca, with the fusion of the two moments, there begins the celebrated D. that Daniele da Volterra frescoed in Rome in the Trinità dei Monti. The triangular schema of the Lippis and of Signorelli of Cortona is transformed, and the composition, set on diagonal lines, assumes plastic vigor in the massive human architectures and creates a work of the very highest dramatic value. The Barocci in his D. of the cathedral of Perugia, finished in 1569, shows himself to adhere to the Volterrano's schema.
In the 17th century, among others, noteworthy for its monumental construction is the canvas of Massimo Stanzioni in the Certosa di S. Martino in Naples, one of the last works in which the theme of the D. is expressed in all the power of its high religious significance. - See pl. XCI.
