Lamentation Over the Dead Christ, by William Dyce, R.A. (1806-1864). c.1835-47. Oil on canvas. 82 5/8 x 65 inches (210.8 x 165.1 cm). Collection of Aberdeen Art Gallery and Museums, accession no. ABDAG000705. Image courtesy of Aberdeen Art Gallery and Museums, via Art UK under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial licence (CC BY-NC). [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
This may be the painting Dyce exhibited at the (Royal) Scottish Academy in 1835, no. 228, but this seems unlikely because Brydall described this work as a "semicircular altarpiece" (Brydall 399). Tim Barringer therefore feels this work could have been painted later in the 1840s:
In the hugely ambitious Lamentation Over the Dead Christ, Dyce distilled the influences of Perugino and early Raphael; stylised figures are geometrically deployed before a carefully observed landscape. Though this work has traditionally been dated to 1835, it probably derives from the next decade. Indeed, his friend Charles West Cope wrote in his diary on 17 January 1847 of seeing in Dyce’s studio ‘a sketch for his altarpiece, a ‘deposition’ in the Bellini or Perugino manner, colour like stained glass.’ (Babbington 2006, p. 98). The most direct source for this historicist work seems to be the Lamentation by Pietro Perugino (1495, Palletina, Palazzo Pitti, Firenze), but the crisp outlines, firmly limned draperies and fidelity to nature likely reflect Dyce’s interest in earlier Northern European painters such as Rogier van der Weyden. The narrative takes place in a landscape that seems more Italian than Middle Eastern: a single palm tree in the distance serves to confirm the location, however, while the architecture of Jerusalem, in the right distance, does present a markedly Eastern appearance. Beyond it can be discerned the hill of Calvary with the three crosses. A young St John the Evangelist, his hands clasped in despair, stands to the left. [496]
The Virgin Mary kneels to the right of her dead son looking down at him with her hands also clasped. She wears the colours of marian blue and red traditionally associated with her. The blue of her mantle represents the Virgin's purity and denotes her royal status while the red of her dress symbolizes traits associated with motherhood, including love and devotion. The elderly man cradling Christ's head cannot be St. Joseph, Mary's husband, because he was no longer alive at the time of the crucifixion. He may therefore be Joseph of Arimathea, the wealthy follower of Jesus, who approached Pontius Pilate and asked for Christ's body so that he could give it a proper burial. Joseph and Nicodemus were the two men who wrapped the body of Jesus in linen strips and spices of myrrh and aloes prior to his burial in the tomb.
The exact date of this painting has proved difficult to pinpoint because Dyce was interested in the subjects of Jesus's deposition from the cross, the lamentation, and the entombment over an extended period of his career. The lamentation occurs between Christ's deposition and his entombment. Marcia Pointon has pointed out the similarity of the painting to a pen-and-ink drawing in the British Museum which can't date to later than 1842 since that was the year Dyce gave it to its original owner, fellow artist Mark Dessurne.
The Deposition. c.1842. Pen and brown ink on grey-green paper. 6 5/8 x 10 5/8 inches (16.8 x 27.0 cm). Collection of the British Museum, museum registration no. 1926,0901.1. Image courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial licence (CC BY-NC). [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Pointon notes that the pyramidal grouping of the figures and their frieze-like disposition on the picture plane anticipates the composition of the painting. (Art Bulletin, 263). In the painting there are fewer figures and Christ lies facing in the opposite direction. The Virgin Mary is not swooning and supported by one of her attendants. The figure of St John the Evangelist, however, is copied almost exactly from the drawing with him standing to the left of the dead Christ, isolated from the main group, his head bowed and hands clasped together.
Anne Steed feels the importance of knowing the date of this painting is to ascertain whether "the detailed plant studies and the observation of the minutiae of nature may seem to anticipate the Pre-Raphaelites, rather than being a response to them" (99). I suspect it is likely to be the former, due also to Dyce's familiarity with the work of the Nazarenes. Pointon as well found aspects of the treatment of the landscape in this painting unusual for a work she dated to the 1830s, therefore also supporting a later date for the painting:
It is interesting to notice in the foreground the detailed clarification of stones, twigs and plants, which we usually associate with a much later period in Dyce's career when, as in George Herbert at Bemerton of 1861, for example, he appears to have been working under the influence of Pre-Raphaelite practice. The landscape of The Dead Christ bears little relation to normal landscapes by Dyce of this period although an attention to detail is a feature of Shirrapburn Loch of c.1831. It would seem that it was a certain class of subject which brought out a latent feeling for detail in Dyce at this early date. The Dead Christ is set in a landscape which is neither obsessively archaistic in the matter which Holman Hunt was to adopt nor organized and manipulated in order to reinforce the spiritual message in a Renaissance manner. There is a Poussinesque naturalness about the event taking place in the landscape which becomes the predominant feature of Dyce's religious landscapes of the fifties. [35-36]
The Influence of Italian Renaissance Painting
Steed feels that Dyce deliberately made this painting look archaic in emulation of early Italian painting:
The pyramidal emphasis has come from Perugino and along with the obvious stylistic obeisance, there is a striking similarity in the particular emphasis on the arrangement of hands in both paintings. Using hands to express emotion, Dyce reproduces exactly the restrained yet highly charged emotional intensity of Perugino's Lamentation. Both paintings would have been intended as works for religious contemplation and the motif of interlaced hands carries the viewer around the composition, adding to the devotional experience. An ethereal vision of Jerusalem forms the distant background. The architecture and the solitary palm tree create a Middle Eastern setting but the landscape is utterly Italian in inspiration, painted in the style of the quattrocento, as are the detailed plant studies in the foreground. Following Renaissance precedents, the landscape may even have a symbolic meaning. The hill of Calvary associated with Christ's death is located on the right, in the earthly realm represented by the city. On the opposite side the palm trees stand in isolation, a symbol of the resurrection and of Christ's victory over death. Two massive trees dominate the centre of the painting, framing between the entrance to Jerusalem, perhaps representing the gateway between the two realms. [98-99]
Pointon also saw the influence of the early Renaissance on this composition: "Although the posing of the figures and the voluminous treatment of their draperies is Raphaelesque, the sweetness of expression, particularly in the figures of St. John and the Virgin, is reminiscent of an artist like Filippo Lippi. St. John, his head drooping in sorrow, anticipates the figure of the young apostle in St. John Leading the Blessed Virgin from the Tomb, begun in 1844. Undoubtedly St. John as the youthful witness, the scholar, the disseminator of Christian truth, had a special meaning for Dyce, an artist convinced of the ultimately religious function of all art" (William Dyce 1806-1864, 35)
Bibliography
Barringer, Tim. Preraffaelliti Rinascimento Moderno [Pre-Raphaelites Modern Renaissance] . Milan: Dario Cimorelli Editore, 2024, cat. II.3, 496.
Brydall, Robert. Art in Scotland; its origins and progress. Edinburgh & London: William Blackwood and Sons, 1889.
Cope, Charles Henry Ed. Reminiscences of Charles West Cope, R.A. London: Richard Bentley and Son, 1891, 167.
Lamentation over the Dead Christ. Art UK. Web. 14 December 2024.
The Deposition. British Museum. Web. 14 December 2024.
Pointon, Marcia. William Dyce 1806-1864. A Critical Biography. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979.
_____. "William Dyce as a Painter of Biblical Subjects." The Art Bulletin LVIII, No. 2 (June 1976): 260-68.
Steed, Anne. William Dyce and the Pre-Raphaelite Vision. Ed. Jennifer Melville. Aberdeen: Aberdeen City Council, 2006, cat. 13, 98-99.
Created 14 December 2024