Collection

Entombment of Christ

Szymon Czechowicz

Basic information

ID: Ж-6001
Author: Szymon Czechowicz
Name: Entombment of Christ
Date of creation: c.1767 (?)
Country: Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
Technique: oil painting
Material: canvas oil
Dimensions (height x width, cm): 246 x 145.5

Additionally

Type: painting
Genre: religious painting
Plot: Entombment of Christ
Provenance: the Rzewuski collection (Pidhirtsi Castle)
Exposition: Zhovkva Castle

Information about author

Author: Szymon Czechowicz
Artist's lifetime: 1689–1775
Biography: Szymon Czechowicz was born in an impoverished noble family in Krakow on July 28, 1689. He became an orphan at a young age. Thanks to the support of his patron and philanthropist Franciszek Ossolinski, the artist went to Rome, where he studied painting at the Academy of St. Luke under the guidance of Carlo Maratti. The first professional works of the artist were copies after famous painters, such as Rubens, Van Dyck and others; the artist drew upon their iconographic compositions. In 1765, at the invitation of Waclaw Rzewuski, he arrived at Pidhirtsi Castle in the Lviv region; by 1767, Czechowicz created 107 works that became part of the castle interior and a kind of the first museum of the artist. During the last period of his life, Szymon Czechowicz worked in Lithuania and Warsaw, where he opened his own art studio. The artist died on July 21, 1775. He was considered to be one of the best artists of the Baroque era in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Among the artist's creative legacy there are portraits and monumental paintings on sacred themes.

Object description

This is a multi-figure composition in the center of which three men hold a stretcher with the body of the dead Jesus Christ stripped to the waist on it. In the right corner of the painting there is a female figure with flowing hair depicted on her knees; she is dressed in a coat with floral ornaments. The man to the right of the body of Christ is dressed in a green tunic and red himatium. Next to him there is a figure of an older bearded man in an oriental headdress that resembles a Muslim turban. In the upper left corner of the painting there are figures of three women, one of whom (the Virgin Mary ?) is dressed in a blue omophorion. In the background of the painting there is a hill with three crosses and human silhouettes carrying long ladders against the background of the cloudy sky. An architectural landscape with a white building (a temple ?) is depicted close to them.

Entombment of Christ

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