The Entombment (Caravaggio)

Two men lower the dead Christ onto the bare slab of the anointing stone, Nicodemus gripping him under the knees and staring out at us, the corner of the stone jutting forward so that the body seems about to be laid down in our own space. Caravaggio builds the Entombment as a heavy descending diagonal of grief, from the upflung arms of a mourning woman down to the trailing hand of Christ. Painted for a Roman church and now in the Vatican, it was admired and copied by Rubens, among many others.