The Entombment of Christ by La Roldana in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, February 2020

The Entombment of Christ
1700–1701


Object Details

Title: The Entombment of Christ

Artist: Luisa Roldán, called La Roldana (Spanish, Seville 1652–1706 Madrid)

Date: 1700–1701

Culture: Spanish, Madrid

Medium: Polychrome terracotta

Dimensions: Overall (confirmed): 19 1/2 × 26 × 17 in. (49.5 × 66 × 43.2 cm)

Classification: Sculpture

Credit Line: Purchase, several members of The Chairman's Council Gifts, Walter and Leonore Annenberg Acquisitions Endowment Fund, Álvaro Saieh Bendeck and Alejandro Santo Domingo Gifts, and Mary Trumbull Adams Fund; Edward J. Gallagher Jr. Bequest, in memory of his father, Edward Joseph Gallagher, his mother, Ann Hay Gallagher, and his son, Edward Joseph Gallagher III; The Bernard and Audrey Aronson Charitable Trust Gift, in memory of her beloved husband, Bernard Aronson; Anonymous Gift and Louis V. Bell Fund, 2016

Accession Number: 2016.482

The Entombment is one of the two “jewel-like sculptures” Luisa Roldán gave to the newly installed King Philip V of Spain in 1701, petitioning him to appoint her sculptor to the royal court. In the previous decade she had pioneered a genre of sculpture—powerfully conceived and exquisitely modelled and painted figural groups, made on a deliberately intimate scale—of which this is perhaps the finest. The emotive expressions of the six figures surrounding the body of Christ as he is laid to rest run the gamut from angry disbelief and empty grief, to tender love and sympathy. The Entombment may have been placed in a convent or monastery affiliated with the royal family, or in the family’s private rooms or chapels. In whichever context, it would have inspired meditative devotion, encouraging the viewer to identify with the witnesses to Christ’s Passion.

Text from: www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/709109