Polychrome Wooden Entombment - France, XVIth Century

This high-quality high relief represents the Entombment. On the left, Joseph of Arimathea supports the bust of Christ while on the right, Nicodemus grasped the shroud under his legs. Both are preparing to lift the Savior to place him in his sepulcher. The high and low relief carved versions of this episode dating from the 16th century are common in the art market. These are mainly attributed to the Flemish workshops which developed around 1500 a massive, rational and organized production of wooden altarpieces consisting of a box inhabited by a multitude of reliefs. But unlike these Flemish versions, our relief isolates the two righteous here, Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea, traditionally accompanied by the Virgin, Saint John and the weeping holy women. Should we therefore imagine that our sculpture was once accompanied by another group, positioned in the background, which completed the scene, or should we imagine it as an independent work that would have taken place in a small niche? Difficult to say as this work escapes the traditional typology resulting from the late Flemish Gothic (also very influential in the sculpture of northern France of the first half of the 16th century) to crystallize around its nature, its shaping technique and its soft and naturalistic style the novelties of the Renaissance.