The Resurrection of Christ

The resurrection of Christ as one of the most important representations of Christianity occurs in the modern iconography of its various branches. Hence, although the work on display came from the brush of an unknown artist in Protestant Pomerania, it was based on the composition of a work by the Italian Renaissance painter Jacopo Tintoretto (1519-1594). His The Resurrection of Christ was created between 1579 and 1582, as one of a series of paintings decorating the residence of the Brotherhood of St Roch (now Scuola Grande di San Rocco) in Venice. Tintoretto's work was distributed in the early 17th century through reproduction prints, including those by Aegidius Sadeler (1570-1629). The dynamic composition was based on a diagonal line, common in Tintoretto's work, defined by the side wall of the entrance to the grotto and the floating body of Christ, whose figure is illuminated by rays emanating from the open tomb. The colours of the robes – the white of the perizoma and the red of the cloak – symbolise divine power and love, while the flag with a red cross on a white background is the traditional attribute of the Risen Christ. Below, a group of angels hold the lid of a stone tomb, beside which soldiers sleep to guard it. Two female figures approach on the left. The author of the Szczecin version based his work on the image, which may have accounted for the differences from the original. The white perizoma, the flared part of which extends beyond the contour of the hips, was painted red and thus became part of the cloak. The compositional differences are evident, for example, in the lower corner of the painting, where one of the soldiers is sleeping on the right. In the original, all that can be seen is the outline of his figure clad in a red cloth, with a vase standing next to it. However, in the representation presented here, the soldier has his head and shoulders uncovered – but no vessel. Justyna Bądkowska