The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb

This fascinating panel is a copy of Hans Holbein the Younger’s The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb (c. 1521; Kunstmuseum, Basel), one of the most evocative and arresting images of the Christ in Western art. Placed within the confined space of a narrow panel, the life-sized figure of Jesus is depicted with stark realism, laid on a white shroud in his tomb. The painter prominently emphasizes the wounds of his Passion in his side, hands and feet, all of which are vividly presented to the viewer for contemplation. The iconography shows a clear engagement with late Medieval piety. Even with the dawning of the Reformation, the emphasis on affective and emotive devotion, which had begun to be popularised in the Netherlands during fifteenth century, continued to grow. Holbein’s Christ quite clearly plays heavily into this tradition. The painting was commissioned by the Swiss lawyer and humanist Bonifacius Amerbach (1495-1562). Its function has often been debated by scholars, but Christian Müller has convincingly argued that the panel was intended to accompany an inscribed epitaph of exactly the same length in the small cloister of the Charterhouse of Saint Margaret in Basel, as a memorial for Amerbach’s parents and brother who were buried there (Hans Holbein the Younger: The Years in Basel 1515-1532, C. Müller and S. Kemperdick (eds.), exhibition catalogue, Basel, 2006, p. 257). The painting, however, was not actually installed at the charterhouse given the increasing religious tension over devotional images during the 1520s. Instead, Amerbach kept it within his own collection which was later inherited by his son Basilius, who continued to collect and acquire works of art at his residence at Zum Kaiserstuhl in Basel. In 1661, the Amerbach Cabinet, as it was known, was purchased by the city and university of Basel to keep it in the city. In 1671, the exhibition opened to the public, forming the core collection of the modern day Kunstmuseum in the city.

The present panel closely replicates Holbein’s original. The size of the work suggests that there was some forethought in creating the copy and that it was likely a specific commission, though the exact circumstances of this moment are not known. The support consists of a single panel of silver fir wood. Recent dendrochronological investigation has suggested that the panel comes from a tree felled in around 1657 in Germany or Austria. Given the allowance of time that wood for panel painting was typically left for to season it after a tree was cut down, the date for the painting can thus be situated in the last quarter of the seventeenth century, and presumably after 1671 when Holbein’s painting first went on display in Basel.