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The Entombment

Creator

Italian Artist · 1500–1504

Luca Penni came from a family of Florentine weavers and may have been Raphael's pupil in Rome, since his brother had an important position in Raphael's Roman workshop. In the late 1520s, Penni worked with his brother-in-law Perino del Vaga in Genoa and Lucca. In 1530 Penni traveled to France, where he remained until his death. From 1537 to 1540, he collaborated with Rosso Fiorentino and Francesco

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Date: about 1550
Medium: Black chalk, pen and brown ink, brush with brown wash, heightened with white gouache
Culture: Italian
Department: Drawings
Institution: Getty Museum
Object ID: d1bfe238-23fc-439e-b4d0-95b15a0af886

From the Getty Museum record

The bearded figure of Joseph of Arimathea carefully lifts Christ's cloth-wrapped body into a sepulcher-his own tomb, recently hewn into a recess in the rocks. Numerous weeping and gesturing figures surround the tomb. The gospel of Saint Matthew vividly describes this scene of Christ's entombment, and Luca Penni closely followed the biblical description. Penni's distinctive style of drawing often accentuated outlines, particularly of facial features. Here he also drew over several faces to emphasize their outlines, such as the profile of the bearded man on the right and the woman with her arms raised. Delicate areas of white heightening form the delicate tufts of grass that hang over the edge of the cave and create highlights on the hair and clothing.

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