XXXV

THE ENTOMBMENT

I DO not consider that in fulfilling the task of interpreter entrusted to me, with respect to this series of engravings, I may in general permit myself to unite with it the duty of a critic. But in the execution of a laborious series of engravings, some must of course be better, some worse; and it would be unjust, no less to the reader than to Giotto, if I allowed this plate to pass without some admission of its inadequacy. It may possibly have been treated with a little less care than the rest, in the knowledge that the finished plate, already in the possession of the members of the Arundel Society,¹ superseded any effort with inferior means; be that as it may, the tenderness of Giotto’s composition is, in the engraving before us, lost to an unusual degree.

It may be generally observed that the passionateness of the sorrow both of the Virgin and disciples, is represented by Giotto and all great following designers as reaching its crisis at the Entombment, not at the Crucifixion. The expectation that, after experiencing every form of human suffering, Christ would yet come down from the cross, or in some other visible and immediate manner achieve for Himself the victory, might be conceived to have supported in a measure the minds of those among His disciples who watched by His cross. But when the agony was closed by actual death, and the full strain was put upon their faith, by their laying in the sepulchre, wrapped in His grave-clothes, Him in whom they trusted “that it had been He which should

¹ [A copper-plate engraving by Herr Schäffer, from a drawing by Signor Belloli; issued as one of the Society’s publications for the year 1851-1852.]

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[Version 0.04: March 2008]