The Burial of Christ
Gustave Doré, 1866 · Matthew 27:60
The passage
And laid it in his own new tomb, which he had hewn out in the rock: and he rolled a great stone to the door of the sepulchre, and departed.
Matthew 27:60
About this plate
A rock chamber, entered from the right. The body is being carried in, held by three or four figures, and the frontmost carrier steps down toward us. Women crowd the entrance behind. Above and around, the rock closes in — the top third of the plate is nothing but stone.
The weight of the rock is the point. Doré gives more of this block to the ceiling of the tomb than to any of the people in it, and the figures are pressed into the lower part of the frame by it.
The verse is an inventory of somebody else's property: And laid it in his own new tomb, which he had hewn out in the rock: and he rolled a great stone to the door of the sepulchre, and departed. His own. New. Hewn. And then he went home.
That last word is the one to sit with. Matthew ends the day with a man walking away from a grave he had made for himself and given to someone else, and Doré draws the entrance behind them already narrowing.
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