This relief portrays an angel and a cherub lamenting over the body of the dead Christ.
Credit
The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens. Gift of Edward W. and Julia B. Bodman Collection, Mr. and Mrs. Edward Carter, Mr. and Mrs. Jack Cummings, Donald E. and Ruth B. Evans, Herbert O. Knecht, Mrs. Malcolm McNaghten, Mr. and Mrs. C.C. Moseley, Kate Fowler Merle-Smith, Florence M. Quinn, Kate Van Nuys Page, Bequest of Virginia Steele Scott, and Mrs. Douglas Wright, Jr., purchased by exchange, 2012.
Angels mourn the dead Christ, whose body gracefully drapes across the foreground. The artist has skillfully rendered the figure’s beautiful torso and fine-featured face and has handled the clay—incising details of the background landscape and more fully modeling the bodies and drapery—to create a surprising sense of depth in this shallow relief.