The word made flesh

Alongside the Easter Week story of sacrifice and salvation runs a second narrative – the story of Christ’s body. Each stage of Jesus’s spiritual journey – from the entry into Jerusalem to the Ascension – has its corporeal counterpart. As the last few days of his earthly life passed by so his physical appearance deteriorated: he was stripped, scourged, crowned with thorns, crushed by the weight of the cross, crucified and pierced by a lance.

It is no surprise that Christ’s death should become the single greatest life-giving force in art – from the first depiction of Jesus on the cross in about 420 and for the next 1,000 years and more. The Passion narrative provided artists with a ready-made series of set-piece scenes, and each was a painting waiting to happen. But for all the innumerable Crucifixions, Depositions and Resurrections, there is one episode that has only rarely been portrayed – the time between Good Friday and Easter Sunday when Christ was neither man nor deity, the time when he was dead.