Support The panel consists of two vertically grained oak planks (30.2 and 29.3 cm). It was thinned to approx. 0.5 cm and cradled (cradle now removed). Two large, thin, cross-grain blocks have been attached across the join. The reverse was subsequently bevelled on all sides and coated with wax.
Preparatory layers The smooth double ground extends up to the edges of the support. The first, off-white layer primarily fills the grain of the wood, and is followed by a thin, dark, brownish ground consisting of white pigment particles with an addition of dark brown earth particles.
Underdrawing No underdrawing could be detected with the naked eye or infrared photography.
Paint layers The paint extends partially over the edges of the support. The light areas of the background were thinly applied first, leaving the upper ground exposed to serve as a mid-tone. The pale background consists of mainly white with many bright orange-pink and large pale yellow pigment particles. The highlights of the figures were freely executed with impasted, opaque, creamy white paint, followed by thin, dark and sketchy lines to accentuate the shadows. On top of this a semi-transparent dark brown glaze was applied over most of the surface to create the shadows in the background and to complete the modelling of the forms. The varying thickness of the rich, unctuous paint (both light and dark) creates the gradations in tone. The colouring is warm and monochromatic. Cross-sections show that a palette of black, white and earth pigments was used, with a few grey-blue glassy shards to increase the transparency of the paint.
Emma Boyce, 2022

Fair. The support has become slightly concave. The ground and paint layers are cracked along the entire length of the joins. Two cracks in the support, and in the ground and paint layers, run along the grain and are aligned with the edges of the blocks. Retouchings of small ground and paint losses in areas along the join and edges have become matte and are slightly discoloured. The thick varnish, although still evenly glossy, has yellowed significantly and is cracked, and offers only limited saturation.

…; sale, S.C. Goldsmid (†), Charles Turner (1773-1853) and ‘old pictures from various sources’ [anonymous section], London (Christie’s), 24 January 1919, no. 138;…; anonymous sale, London (Christie’s), 22 December 1920, no. 149, £42, to Malaart;¹¹Copy RKD.…; anonymous sale, Amsterdam (Mak van Waay), 4 April 1921, no. 25, fl. 37;²²Copy RMA.…; purchased from the dealer W. Komter by the museum, as a gift from the Fotocommissie, 1921

Object number: SK-A-2857

Credit line: Purchased with the support of the Commissie voor Fotoverkoop

Christ’s entombment is described in all four gospels (Matthew 27:59-61; Mark 15:45-47; Luke 23:53-56; John 19:39-42). Joseph of Arimathea received the lifeless body from Pilate, wrapped it in a fragrant shroud, and with the aid of Nicodemus and in the presence of the three Marys placed it in a tomb hollowed out of the rock. From the second half of the sixteenth century the scene was often set in a cave-like space with a view of the outside world,⁴⁴Van der Coelen in J. van der Waals, Prenten in de Gouden Eeuw: Van kunst tot kastpapier, exh. cat. Rotterdam (Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen) 2006, p. 158. as is the case in this signed painting. Benjamin Cuyp depicted the subject at least three times,⁵⁵I. Ember, ‘Benjamin Gerritsz. Cuyp (1612-1652)’, Acta Historiae Artium 25 (1979), pp. 89-141, esp. p. 139, nos. 80-82. which makes it impossible to say whether the ‘burial of Jesus Christ’ listed in the 1685 probate inventory of Abraham Heyblom of Dordrecht is the panel now in the Rijksmuseum.⁶⁶GPI, N-1500, no. 72.

The composition with its pronounced diagonals and the animated gestures of the bystanders recur regularly in Cuyp’s oeuvre, as in two versions of a Raising of Lazarus.⁷⁷Kunstsammlungen & Museen Augsburg; illustrated in I. Ember, ‘Benjamin Gerritsz. Cuyp (1612-1652)’, Acta Historiae Artium 25 (1979), pp. 89-141, esp. p. 108. And St Petersburg, The State Hermitage Museum; photo RKD. The strange flaxen yellow with which he made the figures stand out against the darkness and the sketchy technique of stripy brushstrokes are typical of the artist’s work of the 1640s.⁸⁸I. Ember, ‘Benjamin Gerritsz. Cuyp (1612-1652)’, Acta Historiae Artium 25 (1979), pp. 89-141, esp. p. 121. That was also the period when he usually omitted the initials of his Christian names from his signature. In its technique the Amsterdam picture is close to both a Resurrection that was auctioned in 1995,⁹⁹Sale, Stockholm (Bukowski’s), 30 May 1995 sqq., no. 231 (ill.). and the version of Raising of Lazarus kept in St Petersburg,¹⁰¹⁰The State Hermitage Museum; photo RKD. all three of which are roughly the same size. Ember has stated that the latter painting is the companion piece of the one in the Rijksmuseum, but its wooden support would appear to rule that out.¹¹¹¹I. Ember, ‘Benjamin Gerritsz. Cuyp (1612-1652)’, Acta Historiae Artium 25 (1979), pp. 89-141, esp. p. 121.

Ember has suggested that Cuyp based his painting on Rembrandt’s drawing of the entombment of Christ, which is on top of a Raising of Lazarus.¹²¹²I. Ember, ‘Benjamin Gerritsz. Cuyp (1612-1652)’, Acta Historiae Artium 25 (1979), pp. 89-141, esp. p. 121. On that drawing see Royalton-Kisch in Catalogue of Drawings by Rembrandt and his School in the British Museum, London 2010, ‘Drawings by Rembrandt’, no. 12. Leaving aside the compositional differences, it is unlikely that he ever saw that sheet. What the present work does demonstrate, once again, is Cuyp’s familiarity with Rembrandt’s idiom. The chiaroscuro makes the lifeless body the focal point of the scene, just as Rembrandt did in his Entombment, which was part of the Passion series that he made for Stadholder Frederik Hendrik at the end of the 1630s.¹³¹³Munich, Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Alte Pinakothek; illustrated in J. Bruyn et al., A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings, III, Dordrecht/Boston/London 1989, p. 272. As in that picture, Cuyp placed the Virgin in the foreground together with a woman who is probably the mourning Mary Magdalen. The latter’s headdress is strikingly similar to that of her counterpart in Rembrandt’s Entombment. The way in which the bystanders are set as dark silhouettes against the illuminated background and the dramatic effect of this device immediately recall Rembrandt’s etched Raising of Lazarus of around 1632.¹⁴¹⁴S.S. Dickey (ed.), The Illustrated Bartsch, L, New York 1993, p. 59, no. 73-1. The restless brushwork, chiaroscuro and bright highlights in the figures are also related to the oeuvre of Leonaert Bramer.¹⁵¹⁵Cf., for example, SK-A-845.

Gerbrand Korevaar, 2022

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

I. Ember, ‘Benjamin Gerritsz. Cuyp (1612-1652)’, Acta Historiae Artium 25 (1979), pp. 89-141, esp. pp. 120-21

1934, p. 78, no. 752a; 1976, p. 185, no. A 2857

Gerbrand Korevaar, 2022, 'Benjamin Gerritsz. Cuyp, The Entombment, c. 1640 - 1652', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20027738