The Descent from the Cross
Gustave Doré, 1866 · Matthew 27:57
The passage
When the even was come, there came a rich man of Arimathaea, named Joseph, who also himself was Jesus’ disciple:
Matthew 27:57
About this plate
A ladder against the cross, and the body coming down. A man at the top takes the weight under the arms; another on the ladder guides the legs; below, hands are already reaching up. At the foot of the plate a woman has collapsed into the arms of two others, her head fallen back.
The body is drawn as dead weight, and that is the difficulty of the picture. Everyone in the upper half is managing a load that cannot help them, and Doré draws the strain in the forearms of the man on the ladder.
The verse is not about any of this. When the even was come, there came a rich man of Arimathaea, named Joseph, who also himself was Jesus' disciple. Matthew stops the narrative to introduce somebody — a rich man, with a name and a home town, who has not appeared before and who owns a tomb.
It takes property to bury a body. That is the quiet content of the verse, and the reason this scene could happen at all is that somebody with standing turned up before dark.
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