Follower of Caravaggio

Follower of CARAVAGGIO (Milan, 1571 - Porto Ércole, 1610)
"Holy Burial".
Oil on canvas. Relined.
Measurements: 41,5 x 32 cm; 46 x 47 cm (frame).
This work faithfully reproduces the famous composition of the Holy Burial, made by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio between 1602 and 1603, whose original is preserved today in the Pinacoteca Vaticana. The canvas was conceived for the altar of the Pietà of Santa Maria in Vallicella (Chiesa Nuova), one of the most significant spaces of Counter-Reformation Rome. After the Napoleonic seizure, the painting was moved out of Italy and, after the fall of Napoleon, it returned definitively to Rome, entering the art gallery under the pontificate of Pius VII.
The work analyzed here maintains the same compositional structure and the same repertoire of characters, which confirms the early and extraordinary diffusion of the Caravaggist model. This fidelity is evidence not only of the immediate popularity of the original, but also of the profound impact it had on contemporary artists and theorists. From the moment of its presentation, the Holy Burial was the subject of praise from figures such as Giovanni Pietro Bellori, and aroused the admiration of Baroque masters such as Peter Paul Rubens, who went so far as to make a copy of the painting, thus recognizing its exemplary value.
One of the most significant elements of the composition is the use of tenebrist light, a fundamental characteristic of Caravaggio's language: an artificial, focal and directed illumination that violently bursts into the scene to model the bodies and accentuate the emotional charge of the episode. This lighting strategy reinforces the profoundly human reading of the sacred theme, a distinctive feature of the artist's late production, in which the divine is manifested through physical experience and tangible pain.
Added to this is a restrained and almost monochromatic chromatic range, dominated by ochers, earthy tones and broken whites, typical of the mature Caravaggio. This chromatic austerity not only intensifies the drama of the scene, but also concentrates the viewer's attention on the corporeality of the figures and the gravity of the moment represented, consolidating the work as one of the most influential paradigms of European Baroque.