Circle of the Bassano family; 16th century

Circle of the BASSANO; XVI century.
"Holy Burial".
Oil on canvas. Relined.
Presents restorations.
Measurements: 85 x 120 cm.
The painting represents the deposition of Christ in the tomb, the scene takes place in a space marked by darkness in which the artist plays extensively with the body of the recumbent Christ as a central point of illumination. The body of Jesus is represented practically naked, barely covered by the "perizonium" or cloth of purity, but on the sheet that has served to take him down from the cross and now serves as a shroud. Joseph of Arimathea, the rich man who gave up his tomb to bury Jesus, according to the Gospels, holds Christ by the shoulders, while in the other the presence of two of the three Marys can be appreciated.As the Prado Museum in Madrid, which houses a work of similar composition to the present painting, points out; "The Bassano workshop specialized in the serial production of small works of private devotion taking as a model the large compositions of the head of the family, Jacopo. The Holy Burial, executed on slate, is an example of this type of painting. The loss of material is due to the excessive polishing of the stone before painting".
Formally we can relate this work to the Bassano workshop, a key family saga for the development of the Venetian Mannerist school. Its founder was Jacopo Bassano (ca.1515 - 1592), although his father had already been a popular artist, from whom Jacopo learned the costumbrist tone with which he endowed most of his religious compositions. An artist of great success in his time, Jacopo Bassano worked in Venice and other Italian cities, and established a workshop in his native Bassano del Grappa, near Venice. It was there that his four sons, who continued his style, were trained and developed their careers: Francesco the Younger (1549-1592), Gerolamo (1566-1621), Giovanni Battista (1553-1613) and Leandro (1557-1622).