Fourth article in the Raphael series. If you are preparing an advanced exam and want to work on telling stories in the past, book a private online lesson or join the course waiting list at my-italian-teacher.ch.
The artwork at a glance
- Artist: Raphael
- Title: The Entombment (Carrying of the Dead Christ to the Tomb), known as the Borghese Deposition or Baglioni Altarpiece
- Date: signed and dated 1507 (RAPHAEL URBINAS MDVII)
- Medium and size: oil on poplar panel, 174.5 × 178.5 cm
- Patron: Atalanta Baglioni, for the family chapel in San Francesco al Prato, Perugia
- Location: Galleria Borghese, Rome (the cymatium with God the Father is in Perugia, Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria; the predella with the Theological Virtues is in the Vatican Museums)
Grief turned into a masterpiece
Few Renaissance works were born from a story as dark as Raphael’s Baglioni Altarpiece. The patron, the Perugian noblewoman Atalanta Baglioni, had lost her son Grifonetto in one of the bloodiest episodes in the city’s history. Years later she asked the young Raphael for an altarpiece for the family chapel. Vasari, in his Life of Raphael, describes it as a panel showing a dead Christ being carried to burial.
The work marks a decisive step in the painter’s career. For the first time Raphael tackles a large dramatic subject, with figures in motion, bodies bearing real weight, violent emotions. He does so in open dialogue with Michelangelo and with ancient sculpture. A century later the painting would become the protagonist of another drama: a night-time removal ordered by a collector cardinal.
It is a story that lends itself to being told, and the workshop at the end uses it to practise the Italian tenses of historical narration: passato remoto, trapassato remoto and imperfetto.
1. Perugia’s “red wedding”
In July 1500 Perugia was dominated by the Baglioni family, torn by internal rivalries. Taking advantage of the celebrations for a family wedding, a group of conspirators, including the young Federico, known as Grifonetto, Atalanta’s son, murdered several relatives during the night. Gian Paolo Baglioni, head of the family, escaped over the rooftops and returned to the city a few days later with his men: Grifonetto was killed in turn.
According to the chronicle of Francesco Matarazzo, a contemporary Perugian chronicler, Atalanta had refused to take her son into her house after the massacre; when she found him dying, however, she forgave him. It is this maternal grief, together with a wish for atonement, that lies behind the commission.
Tradition identifies Grifonetto as the young man seen from behind, at the centre, who holds the sheet in which Christ’s body is carried. In the fainting Virgin on the right, supported by the holy women, many have seen a reflection of Atalanta’s mourning. These identifications are evocative but not securely documented: more recent scholarship, as Anna Coliva, former director of the Galleria Borghese, has pointed out, warns against reading the work only in a romantic key.
2. From Lamentation to Entombment: a changing idea
The many preparatory drawings, preserved among other places in the British Museum and the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, show that Raphael changed his mind several times. The initial project was a Lamentation over the dead Christ, a static scene with the figures gathered around the body, on the model of the Lamentation Perugino had painted in 1495 (now in Palazzo Pitti). Then the composition became an Entombment: Christ’s body is lifted and carried towards the tomb, and the scene acquires movement.
| Aspect | Perugino, Lamentation (1495) | Raphael, Baglioni Altarpiece (1507) |
|---|---|---|
| Action | Static, contemplative, horizontal | Dynamic, diagonal; the bearers walk and strain |
| Bodies | Slender, graceful figures | Visible musculature, twisting poses, real weight |
| Grief | Restrained, measured weeping | Intense pathos; the Virgin’s swoon is a second emotional centre |
| Models | Umbrian tradition | Michelangelo and ancient sculpture |
Michelangelo and antiquity
Christ’s limp body recalls Michelangelo’s Vatican Pietà, which Raphael knew; the kneeling woman twisting to support the Virgin echoes the twisting figures Michelangelo was experimenting with in Florence. Scholars have also suggested as models the reliefs on Roman sarcophagi showing the carrying of a hero’s body, in particular those with the death of Meleager. The scene thus becomes a dialogue between modern painting, contemporary sculpture and classical art.
Landscape and place
A hilly landscape opens in the background. In the upper right the scholar Alessandra Oddi Baglioni, followed by Anna Coliva, has proposed recognising the castle of Antognolla, a family property: a way of anchoring sacred history to the land and memory of the patrons.
3. The theft of 1608
For about a century the altarpiece remained in the Baglioni chapel. Then it caught the eye of Cardinal Scipione Borghese, nephew of Pope Paul V and a voracious collector. In March 1608, with his uncle’s backing, the cardinal had the panel removed from the church at night and taken to his villa in Rome. A papal brief of Paul V then declared the painting the private property of his nephew.
To calm the protests of the Perugians, the Borghese commissioned copies. A payment to Giovanni Lanfranco for a copy is recorded in August 1608, but no trace of that painting survives. In 1609 some silver lamps arrived in Perugia together with a copy now attributed to the Cavalier d’Arpino (Giuseppe Cesari), which entered the Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria in 1863.
The story did not end there. In 1797 the painting was requisitioned by the French and exhibited in Paris; it returned to the Galleria Borghese in 1815, while the predella went to the Vatican Museums. In 2020, at the end of a long restoration carried out in the gallery itself, the altarpiece went back on the walls with new lighting and a system for monitoring the panel’s deformations.
4. A legacy lasting a century
The composition made a deep impression on later artists. Rome’s official tourism website notes that Caravaggio took it up a century later in his Entombment, now in the Vatican. More generally, the Baglioni Altarpiece shows a Raphael who is no longer only the painter of grace: he is an artist able to give form to pain and physical effort, a quality he would develop fully in Rome.
5. A viewing guide: five things to look at
- The sheet: it is the “line” that joins the bearers and transmits the weight of the body; follow it from left to right.
- The bearers’ legs: Raphael studies physical effort and balance.
- The second group: on the right, the fainting Virgin and the holy women form an emotional counterpoint to the main group.
- The kneeling woman: her twisting pose is one of the most “Michelangelesque” points in the painting.
- The landscape: the serenity of the Umbrian countryside contrasts with the drama in the foreground.
This kind of guided observation is also useful for language learning: describing what you see, in what order and with what effects, is a skill required in many advanced oral exams.
6. Italian language workshop (C1)
Glossary
- Compianto (Lamentation): grief around the body of the dead Christ.
- Deposizione (Deposition): strictly, the lowering of Christ’s body from the cross; in common usage also similar scenes.
- Cimasa (cymatium): the top section of an altarpiece.
- Predella: the lower band of an altarpiece, with small scenes.
- Breve (papal brief): a papal document simpler in form than a bull.
- Trafugare: to remove something valuable secretly.
Grammar: the tenses of historical narration
- Passato remoto for completed events: Nel 1608 Scipione Borghese fece prelevare la pala.
- Imperfetto for background and situations: Perugia era divisa da rivalità feroci.
- Trapassato remoto, after (non) appena, dopo che, quando, for an action immediately before a passato remoto: Non appena ebbe saputo della morte del figlio, Atalanta corse da lui.
- Trapassato prossimo for an earlier action in general: Atalanta aveva rifiutato di accoglierlo.
English speakers often use the simple past for all of these; in written Italian the choice of tense carries meaning.
Exercise
Conjugate the verbs in brackets.
Nel luglio del 1500 Perugia (essere) ____ in festa per un matrimonio. Dopo che i congiurati (compiere) ____ la strage, Gian Paolo (fuggire) ____ sui tetti. Pochi giorni dopo Grifonetto (morire) ____. Sua madre, che prima (rifiutare) ____ di accoglierlo, lo (perdonare) ____.
Answers: era; ebbero compiuto; fuggì; morì; aveva rifiutato; perdonò.
Writing task
In 180-200 Italian words, tell a historical episode from your region, alternating passato remoto, imperfetto and trapassato. It is a typical task in the CILS C1 writing paper.
One painting, three stories
Three stories meet in the Baglioni Altarpiece: a grieving mother in Perugia, a young painter growing up fast and a cardinal collector with few scruples. Telling them in Italian means handling the past tenses with care. If you would like to practise with a guide, book a private online lesson at my-italian-teacher.ch. The courses are on their way and the waiting list is open; meanwhile the A1 grammar course is free on the blog.
Recommended reading and resources
- Kristina Herrmann Fiore (ed.), Raffaello. La Deposizione in Galleria Borghese. Il restauro e studi storico-artistici, Motta, 2010. View on Amazon
- Roger Jones, Nicholas Penny, Raphael, Yale University Press. View on Amazon
- Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Artists (Life of Raphael), annotated edition. View on Amazon
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Sources
- Galleria Borghese, online catalogue, Deposition (The Carrying of the Dead Christ to the Sepulchre) (cymatium, predella, provenance, copies by Lanfranco and the Cavalier d’Arpino)
- Finestre sull’Arte, The Transport of Christ to the Tomb. The complex making of an early masterpiece by Raphael
- Turismo Roma, Restoration of Raphael’s Deposition completed (2020 restoration, Michelangelo, Caravaggio)
- Istituto Italiano Edizioni Atlas, CLIL sheet on the Deposition (the 1500 feud, Grifonetto)
- D. Cooper, La commissione di Atalanta Baglioni e la collocazione originaria della Deposizione, University of Warwick
- Key to Umbria, the 1609 copy by the Cavalier d’Arpino
