DEPOSITION OF CHRIST. — By this term is meant the scene depicting the removal of the dead Jesus from the Cross before His burial. The Gospels recount that on the evening of the Friday of "parasceve," after Jesus had died, the noble Joseph of Arimathea went to the Roman procurator Pilate and asked him for the body of Jesus to bury II. Pilate, surprised at such a rapid death by crucifixion, granted Joseph the corpse. Joseph "deposed" (Mk. and Lk.) or "took down" (Jn.) Jesus from the Cross, with the help of Nicodemus, who had come with about a hundred pounds of myrrh and aloe, embalmed Jesus, wrapped Him in the linen cloth which he had bought, and placed Him in the rock-hewn tomb (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 can be supposed that Joseph removed Jesus from the Cross with his own hands 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 (Perm cup, Rabbula Gospels). However, it is necessary to 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. Strictly speaking, however, d. must be understood, in strict iconographic terms, as the moment when the body of Jesus is taken down from the Cross to be wrapped in the shroud and placed in the tomb. Artists did not always adhere to this precise moment and often extended the episode to the immediately following one of the weeping of the Virgin, Magdalene, John, and the pious women over Christ already taken down from the Cross. From this representation there then derived the other, even more concise, of the Pietà (v.).
In the history of art, this distinction was not always observed, and the various iconographic motifs of the last moments of the Passion were often all indicated under the generic name of d.
In the East, it appears in the frescoes of the rock-hewn churches of Cappadocia (Tokale-Göreme) and the scene is reduced to its essentials: Christ is taken down from the Cross and His body is supported by Nicodemus (Jn. 19:38 ff.); the Virgin, St. John, and the pious women witness the scene, frozen in their gestures of grief and not participating directly in the action.
Often the Virgin is depicted in the act of kissing a hand of Jesus left hanging 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 holds the body of her Son in her arms, helped by Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea, while John and the pious women remain in their mute, hieratic stillness (peribeltos of Mistra).
In the West, the iconographic theme is first linked to the motifs of Byzantine art, and knowledge of it, fostered especially by the importation of Eastern codices, spreads increasingly from the 7th century and lasts throughout the Romanesque period. In Rome, the scene of the d. is found in the frescoes of S. Urbano alla Caffarella (11th century) and in S. Giovanni ante portam Latinam (late 12th century); there the d. is performed by St. John and Joseph of Arimathea, a motif repeated in a miniature from cod. lat. 123 of the Angelica Library. In the mosaic cycle of Monreale in Sicily (12th century), the three Marys appear carrying two vases of balm. Notable also is the ivory d. now in Paris, from the 13th century (A. Venturi, II, p. 614 and fig. 442). Thus, when Antelami depicts the d. in the bas-relief of the Modena cathedral, which is then his first securely dated work (1178), the Byzantine scheme 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 grief is added, on the opposite side, the scene of the soldiers casting lots for the Redeemer’s garment. The Virgin, set apart, is bent in her sorrow.
In the d. of the Volterra cathedral, perhaps by a Lombard follower of Antelami, and in that of the Tivoli cathedral, also descending 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 on either side of the Cross. At Volterra they hold the abandoned hands of Jesus; at Tivoli, with greater hieraticism and more direct derivation from Byzantine iconography, they stretch out their hands toward Christ to indicate the path of salvation and the final act of the tragedy of Golgotha.
The scene of the d. depicted on the pulpit of the ancient S. Piero Scheraggio, now in S. Leonardo d'Arcetri, a fragmentary work by Tuscan sculptors of the second half of the 12th century, also goes back to Byzantine canons. Greater dramatic force of attitudes is found in the late 13th-century fresco in the crypt of the Aquileia cathedral, where the Virgin supports the body of Jesus while the pious women gather in a slender, contracted gesture of sorrow and John brings the Redeemer’s garment to his lips. In Venice, in the church of the SS. Apostoli, a museum of the early 1300s shows instead affinities with motifs widespread in the painting and sculpture of central and southern Italy (door of Barisano in the Trani cathedral, Choir, XI, L. 5 of the Estense Library in Modena, and later the d. by Nicola Pisano and assistants in the facade of the Lucca cathedral, etc.).
In the 14th century, with Giotto (Padua, Scrovegni Chapel) the scene changes: to depict the desolate nature of Golgotha there is only a bare tree on top of a rock, which, following a diagonal, leads the eye to the center of the drama, shifted to the lower left. The body of Jesus is slumped, supported by Mary’s loving embrace; the pious women in their motionless forms bend over it and John, his arms outstretched in a supremely plastic gesture, sums up the dramatic apex of grief. Changed accents in the changed compositional scheme humanize the scene, and Giotto’s iconographic motif, which is then the aforementioned one of weeping over the dead Christ, remains one of the highest manifestations of art, which will find wide following for all the centuries to come (v. also PIETÀ).
Simone Martini, in the lost panel of the Antwerp museum, and Pietro Lorenzetti, in the fresco of the lower church of Assisi, instead take up the earlier motif of the body of Jesus not yet completely detached from the Cross and folded into the arms of the participants. Giotto di Stefano, called Giotto (Uffizi d.), returns to Giotto’s scheme but replaces the stark, plastic landscape with the gold ground on which the bare Cross stands out.
Throughout the 14th and 15th centuries, the various iconographic motifs of the d. alternate. In the 16th century, the two main themes are taken up again: that of weeping over Christ and the other that adds to the descent of Jesus from the Cross the swooning of the Virgin, both scenes involving more figures. While the first scheme derives from medieval tradition, the other is modeled on Byzantine painting itself in an ever more synthetic and unified vision.
Del primo motivo sono mirabili esempi le del Signorelli nella cattedrale di Cortona, del Correggio nella pinacoteca di Parma, del Tintoretto nella galleria del’Accademia a Venezia, del Carracci nel museo Nazionale di Napoli, fino alle tante d. del Van Dyck. Del secondo motivo è una prima attuazione quella iniziata da Filippino Lippi nel 1503 per il dipinto della chiesa della S. Anna, nunziata a Firenze, oggi agli Uffizi, e che fu portato a termine da Andrea d’Assisi, seguita dall’altra del 1556 e che il Signorelli lasciò ad Umbertide. Da queste due e dall’altra del Sodoma, dipinta dopo il 1508 per la chiesa di S. Francesco a Siena e oggi in quella pinacoteca, con la fusione dei due momenti, si parte la celebre d. che Daniele da Volterra affresco a Roma nella Trinità dei Monti. Lo schema triangolare del Lippi e del Signorelli di Cortona si trasforma e la composizione imposta su linee diagonali assume vigore plastico nelle massicce architetture umane e crea un’opera di altissimo valore drammatico. Allo schema del Volterrano mostra di attenersi il Barocci nella sua d. della cattedrale di Perugia, finita nel 1569.
Nel Seicento è da ricordare fra le altre, per la sua monumentale costruzione, la tela di Massimo Stanzioni nella certosa di S. Martino a Napoli, una delle ultime opere in cui il tema della d. viene espresso in tutta la potenza del suo alto significato religioso. - Vedi tav. XCI.
DE PROMISSIONIBUS ET PRAEDICATIONIBUS DEI. - Opera falsamente attribuita a Prospero d’Aquitania, benché già Cassiodoro (Instituiones divinarum litterarum: PL 70, 1111) conosca questo nome d’autore. Dal contesto dell’opera risulta che l’autore non è un Gallo, ma un Cartaginese, trasferito nella Campania al tempo del papa Leone.
Queste circostanze di tempo e di luogo raccommandano l’attribuzione a Quodvultdeus, vescovo di Cartaggine ed esiliato in Campania. L’autore parla di 153 profezie (secondo il numero dei pesci in Io. 21,11) su Cristo e la Chiesa, dimostrando che una parte di esse s’è già avverata e che il resto s’avverrà nell’avvenire. Il libro è importante anche per la storia della Bibbia latina.