Entombment

Benvenuto Tisi da Garofalo's Entombment at the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, painted around 1525, depicts Christ's burial in the Raphaelesque manner that Garofalo had absorbed during his stays in Rome and that made him the most popular painter in Ferrara during the first half of the sixteenth century. Garofalo's approach to the Entombment combined the classical balance and emotional restraint of Raphael's compositional style with the warm, atmospheric color of the Ferrarese tradition, creating works of dignified pathos that served the devotional needs of Ferrarese churches and aristocratic collectors. The Hermitage in Saint Petersburg, assembled through the systematic acquisitions of Catherine the Great and subsequent tsars, holds one of the most comprehensive collections of Italian Renaissance painting outside Italy, with particular strength in Venetian and northern Italian work. This Garofalo panel was likely acquired as part of the eighteenth-century collections of Italian painting that formed the nucleus of the Hermitage's Renaissance holdings. The Entombment of Christ — Christ's body carried to the tomb, the Virgin and Magdalene in grief — was one of the most frequently commissioned subjects of devotional altarpieces.

The panel shows Garofalo's characteristic Raphaelesque composition with balanced figure grouping, warm Ferrarese palette, and the restrained emotional expression of his mature devotional style.