The Raising of Lazarus

Caravaggio painted The Raising of Lazarus in 1609 in Messina, one of his last major commissions, for the wealthy Genoese banker Giovanni Battista de' Lazzari who had a chapel in the church of the Padri Crociferi. The enormous canvas — among the largest he ever painted — depicts the moment of resurrection when Christ commands Lazarus to rise, his figures emerging from darkness with concentrated dramatic force. The late style is at its most austere: darker grounds, fewer compositional elements, the drama concentrated in the single contrast between the horizontal Lazarus slowly rising and the surrounding figures' reaction of wonder and terror. The painting is now in Messina's Museo Regionale.

The enormous canvas uses a vast dark void surrounding the dramatically lit figures, with Lazarus's corpse-like body forming a stark diagonal that emphasizes the miraculous nature of the resurrection.