The Maries at the Sepulchre

Mantegna's The Maries at the Sepulchre of around 1505 depicts the three women arriving at the empty tomb on Easter morning, the angel announcing Christ's resurrection to figures whose varied expressions — surprise, disbelief, awakening faith — create one of his most psychologically acute narrative compositions. The late work shows Mantegna's continued engagement with narrative drama well into his seventies, the figures' emotional states rendered with the precise anatomical clarity that had always characterized his figural work. The dawn light of the Easter morning is suggested with atmospheric subtlety unusual in his earlier work.

The rocky tomb entrance is rendered with geological exactitude, the stone surfaces painted in Mantegna's characteristic mineral palette. The three women's faces express a mixture of grief and dawning wonder, captured with the psychological precision that distinguished Mantegna's religious paintings.