Bowdoin College Homepage
Bowdoin College Museum of Art Logo and Wordmark

Advanced Search
Preview image of work. brush and black ink and grey wash heightened with white on brown laid paper,  Dead Christ with Angels (a&b) 44
IIIF Logo
1811.44.a.&.b

Recommend keywords

Help us make our collections more accessible by providing keywords to describe this artwork. The BCMA uses the Getty Art & Architecture Thesaurus to provide consistent keywords. Enter a keyword in the field below and you will be prompted with a list of possible matching AAT preferred terms.

 
 

Dead Christ with Angels (a&b)

Export record as: Plain text | JSON | CDWA-Lite | VRA Core 4

Artist

Leonard Bramer (Delft, Netherlands, 1596 - 1674, Delft, Netherlands)

Title

Dead Christ with Angels (a&b)

Creation Date

1614-1627

Century

16th-17th century

Dimensions

6 1/2 in. x 8 1/4 in. (16.5 cm. x 20.9 cm.)

Object Type

drawing

Creation Place

Europe, Netherlands

Medium and Support

brush and black ink and grey wash heightened with white on brown laid paper

Credit Line

Bequest of the Honorable James Bowdoin III

Copyright

Public Domain

Accession Number

1811.44.a.&.b

Leonard Bramer, a widely traveled Dutch artist who spent six years in Rome, specialized in drawing series of both religious and literary narratives. Michiel Plomp identified this drawing as part of a “Life of Christ” series. The two-sided work depicts the dead body of Christ surrounded by mourning angels. The recto composition places the viewer at the feet of the Redeemer, significantly foreshortening the corpse’s legs and torso; the verso imagines the viewer behind the deceased’s head. The depth captured in these renderings is further enhanced by heavier brushwork and white chalk heightening in the foreground. The accentuated perspective resembles the compositions of Andrea Mantegna’s (ca. 1431--1506) “The Dead Christ and Three Mourners” in the Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan, and Orazio Borgianni’s (ca. 1578--1616)
 in the Galleria Spada, Rome, which may have influenced Bramer’s composition.

Additional Media


Keywords: Christ   Biblical   nude(s)   figures (representations)   angels   work on paper   master drawing   Life of Christ   despair   sorrow   foreshortening   highlighting   Bible story   Christian art   related to religion   death   mourning