Easter Sunday - Mary Magdalene at the Tomb

Title: Mary Magdalene at the Tomb
Artist: Antiveduto Gramatica
Medium: Oil on canvas
Size: 120 x 157 cm
Date: 1620-22
Location: The Hermitage, St. Petersburg.

John 20:11-13 - Now Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot. They asked her, “Woman, why are you crying?” she said, “They have taken my Lord away, and I don’t know where they have put him.”

Such heavenly messengers appear at many of the significant points in salvation history. Their presence witnesses that the powers of heaven have been at work here. Often in Scripture the person who encounters an angel is struck with terror. But if Mary felt such a reaction, John does not mention it. Indeed, there is no indication that she even recognizes them as angels, presumably due to the depth of her grief. The angels speak to her with great compassion. In the face of this grief the angels do not bombard her with good news but rather ask the question that can lead to the healing word.

Antiveduto Gramatica (c. 1571 – April 1626), was a was a proto-Baroque Italian painter, active near Rome. He was born in either Siena or Rome, and according to Giovanni Baglione the artist was given the name Antiveduto ("foreseen") because his father had a premonition that he would be soon be born during a journey between his native Siena and Rome. It was in Rome that Antiveduto was baptised, raised and based his career.

The Morning of the Resurrection

Title: The Morning of the Resurrection
Artist: Edward Coley Burne-Jones
Medium: Oil on wood
Size: 84.5 x 151.1 cm
Date: 1886
Location: Tate Britain, London.

John 20:11-14 Now Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot. They asked her, “Woman, why are you crying?” She said, “They have taken my Lord away, and I don’t know where they have put him.” At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus.

Burrne-Jones began this painting in 1882, but did not complete it until four years later, when it was exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery. After the death of the Hon. Laura Lyttleton (nee Tennant), a young friend of whom the artist was particularly fond, Burne-Jones inscribed a personal memorial or 'oblation' in the lower left-hand corner. He made at least two other versions of the subject. The painting falls at the end of Burne-Jones' Mantegnesque phase, and the regular horizontals and verticals and color strengthen the sad mood. According to de Lisle the angels are making the ancient sign of adoration, of covering the mouth.

Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, 1st Baronet (August 1833 – June 1898) was an English artist and designer closely associated with the later phase of the Pre-Raphaelite movement, who worked closely with William Morris on a wide range of decorative arts as a founding partner in Morris, Marshall, Faulkner, and Company. Burne-Jones was closely involved in the rejuvenation of the tradition of stained glass art in England. On 16 June 1933, Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, a nephew of Burne-Jones, officially opened a centenary exhibition at the Tate Gallery in London. But in fact, long before 1933, Burne-Jones was hopelessly out-of-fashion in the art world, much of which soon preferred the major trends in Modern art, and the exhibit marking the 100th anniversary of his birth was a sad affair, poorly attended. It was not until the mid-1970s that his work began to be re-assessed and once again acclaimed. A major exhibit in 1989 at the Barbican Art Gallery, London traced Burne-Jones's influence on the next generation of artists, and another at Tate Britain in 1997 explored the links between British Aestheticism and Symbolism.

Two Disciples at the Tomb

Title: Two Disciples at the Tomb
Artist: Henry Ossawa Tanner
Medium: Oil on canvas
Size: 129.5 x 105.7 cm
Date: c. 1906
Location: The Art Institute of Chicago.

John 20:2-10 So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!” So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in. Then Simon Peter came along behind him and went straight into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, as well as the cloth that had been wrapped around Jesus’ head. The cloth was still lying in its place, separate from the linen. Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed. (They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.) Then the disciples went back to where they were staying.

In this painting, John’s youthful face reflects the emptiness of the arched tomb. Next to him, bowing his head in awe, stands the bearded disciple Peter, who will later become the leader of the Christian church. The sense of spirituality is emphasized by the light radiating from the tomb. Although Tanner depicted a wide range of subjects he considered himself primarily a painter of religious subjects. “Two Disciples at the Tomb” became one of Tanner’s most well-known religious paintings in America, giving him at long last the kind of recognition that he had received abroad. Called "the most impressive and distinguished work of the season" in 1906, the painting competed against 350 other works to win the Harris Silver Medal at The Art Institute of Chicago. The museum purchased the painting later that year.

Henry Ossawa Tanner (June 1859 – May 1937) was an African American artist who earned international acclaim for his religious paintings. His father was a prominent minister and his mother a former slave who escaped the South through the Underground Railroad. At age eleven, Tanner decided to become an artist, and nine years later the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts accepted him, the only African American out of two hundred students. Throughout his life Tanner kept close ties with his native country and was proud of his contributions as a black American, but chose to live in France, where he felt that his race mattered less to other artists and critics. His painting “Sand Dunes at Sunset, Atlantic City” hangs in the Green Room at the White House, the first painting by an African-American artist to enter the permanent collection of the White House.

The Two Marys at the Tomb

Title: The Two Marys at the Tomb

Artist: Bartolomeo Schedoni

Medium: Oil on canvas

Size: tbd.

Date: 1613

Location: Galleria Nazionale, Parma.

Mark 16:6-8 "Don't be alarmed," he said. "You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter, 'He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.' "

Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.

Throughout Mark, people spread news that they were supposed to keep quiet; here, when Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome are finally commanded to spread the word, they keep quiet. Again, the Gospel displays and ironic twist.

This memorable masterpiece, The Two Marys at the Tomb, gives us cause to regret the brevity of Bartolomeo Schedoni's tormented artistic life. It shows that he really would have been able to point Baroque painting in an original and intense direction. The way he blocked out gestures, used violent light and dazzling whites, combined with perfect clarity of detail to produce an almost metaphysical effect.

Bartolomeo Schedoni (1578-1615) was an Italian early Baroque painter and an eccentric exponent of the Emilian school. Schedoni went to Rome at the close of the sixteenth century, but he soon returned to Emilia and settled in Parma. It was there that he painted a small but fascinating group of masterpieces in a severe and noble style. At the same time his works were warmed by a light that softened fabrics and added delicacy to expressions. His untimely death (perhaps suicide owing to gambling debts) brought an abrupt end to the career of one of the most attractive painters of the seventeenth century.

The Holy Women at the Sepulcher

Title: Le Saintes Femmes au Tombeau (The Holy Women at the Sepulcher)

Artist: William-Adolphe Bouguereau

Medium: Oil on Canvas

Size: tbd

Date: 1890

Location: Private Collection

Mark 16: 4-5 But when they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had been rolled away. As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side, and they were alarmed.

This painting by Bouguereau has an immediacy and vividness, an seems to have been influenced by photography. The young man in white, only just visible in the light that comes from the tomb, at first seems largely redundant. The first and third women are also well composed, but all the meaning and power of the picture is focused in the central figure, on her astonished face and her clasped hands. But the composition invites us to look beyond just the surface image. We can see a fourth place left available to stand among the women, to peer into the tomb, to see what the three women see. There is a place for us to bear witness if we are willing to take the step forward.

William-Adolphe Bouguereau (November 30, 1825 - August 19, 1905) was a French academic painter. Bouguereau was a staunch traditionalist whose realistic genre paintings and mythological themes were modern interpretations of Classical subjects. Toward the end of his career, at the same time that he was admired by the public, he was also impugned by a growing clique of painters and writers of the new generation who considered themselves progressive, and who believed that rebellion against traditional values in painting was their raison d'etre. Bouguereau and his colleagues were rapidly labeled as reactionaries in the face of this growing cult of the new, found first in Impressionism and Post Impressionism. His fate was to be much like that of Rembrandt, whose work was also ridiculed and banished from museums and official art circles for the hundred years following his death.

Women the Morning of the Third Day

Title: Femmes au Matin du 3e Jour (Women the morning of the third day)

Artist: Macha Chmakoff

Medium: Oil on canvas

Size: 81 x 65 cm

Date: c. 2008

Location: Private collection

Mark 16:1-3 When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they might go to anoint Jesus' body. Very early on the first day of the week, just after sunrise, they were on their way to the tomb and they asked each other, "Who will roll the stone away from the entrance of the tomb?"

The women return to the tomb to finish the burial preparations for Jesus that had been omitted due to he onset of Sabbath two nights previous. The spices they bought were not part of a traditional burial for everyone, but would have been used only for the bodies of special persons. In other words, their reason for coming was to serve Jesus. In the Gospel of Mark, women occupy a central position in the mission and message of Jesus as examples of model disciples. These women frequently serve as triumphant examples of faith and sacrifice in contrast to unbelieving men.

Macha Chmakoff is a French psychologist, author, and painter, who studied theology at the Université Catholique de Paris. Chmakoff’s work reflects her belief that society is marked by the divorce between religion and spirituality, and the Christian religion proposes to guide the believer into the fullness of his humanity. To become fully human takes awareness of an emptiness, and Christianity provides the tools required to penetrate the source of this emptiness. More of her work can be viewed on her website at http://www.chmakoff.com/

The Entombment of Christ

Title: The Entombment of Christ

Artist: Sisto Badalocchio

Medium: Oil on canvas

Size: tbd.

Date: 1610

Location: Galleria Borghese, Rome.

Mark 15:46-47 and placed it in a tomb cut out of rock. Then he rolled a stone against the entrance of the tomb. Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses saw where he was laid.

Though no direct participation in the preparation of Christ’s body by the women is mentioned in the Gospel, Mark still stresses the importance of their knowledge about those events. They are not participants, but rather witnesses.

This important painting, ‘The Entombment of Christ’, dating from the first decade of the 17th century, is attributed to Sisto Badalocchio. Here human participation in the event has become the main focus. A comparison with Raphael's Deposition (also in the Galleria Borghese), which inspired it, reveals how the painter insisted on the emotions as reflected in natural movements, and was influenced both by Dürer's prints and antique sculpture.

Sisto Badalocchio Rosa (c.1581 - c.1647) was an Italian painter and engraver of the Bolognese School. Born in Parma, he worked first under Agostino Carracci in Bologna, then Annibale Carracci, in Rome. Annibale's death in 1609 precipitated Badalocchio's return to Emilia. There in 1613 he created his most important work, the frescoes in the cupola and pendentives of San Giovanni Evangelista, Reggio Emilia, a reinterpretation of Correggio's work in the church of the same name in Parma.