The Dead Christ
Gustave Doré, 1866 · Matthew 27:59
The passage
And when Joseph had taken the body, he wrapped it in a clean linen cloth,
Matthew 27:59
About this plate
The body is laid out on the ground at the bottom of the plate, full length, lit, with the cross standing empty behind. Around it, a group has drawn in and stopped moving: a woman bent double over the head, another kneeling, a man standing with his arms folded into his cloak, a figure at the back with a hand over the face.
Doré has put the body along the very bottom edge, so it is the nearest thing to the reader and the lowest thing in the frame. Everyone else is above it, and there is nothing below it at all.
The verse is one clause: And when Joseph had taken the body, he wrapped it in a clean linen cloth. Clean. Of all the adjectives available at that moment, Matthew records the state of the laundry.
It is the small decency in the whole account, and it comes from a man who had only met the situation an hour earlier. The linen in Doré's plate is the brightest surface on the page, and it is the one thing anybody in the picture is still able to do.
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