Entombment of Christ

Polidoro da Caravaggio · 1527/28

Medium

Charcoal, with traces of white gouache, on brown laid paper, laid down on brown laid paper and cream wove paper

Original size

22.2 × 32.8 cm (8 3/4 × 12 15/16 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Italian Renaissance

Polidoro da Caravaggio's *Entombment of Christ* is a work of raw, grief-laden stillness — figures caught in the moment of lowering Christ into the tomb, rendered with a gravity that feels almost sculptural. Polidoro trained under Raphael in Rome and absorbed the High Renaissance ideal of composed, monumental form, but his mature work carries something darker beneath the surface. This drawing, made around 1527 or 1528 in charcoal with touches of white gouache on brown laid paper, reveals how deeply he worked through compositional ideas on paper — layering tone and shadow to build forms that seem to emerge from the ground rather than sit on it. The brown paper itself becomes part of the mid-tone, a technique common to Italian draughtsmanship of the period and used here to remarkable effect. The date of the work places it almost exactly at the Sack of Rome in 1527, the catastrophe that scattered Raphael's circle across Italy and fundamentally altered the course of Italian art. Polidoro fled south, and his later work grew increasingly intense and unresolved. The hand-painted oil reproduction translates the drawing's tonal depth and emotional weight into paint, preserving the brooding atmosphere that makes this study so quietly powerful.