He stands on a cloud and raises his hand.
Bible in art · Matthew
The Passion: The Resurrection
Lucas van Leyden · 1521
The Cleveland Museum of Art
The last plate of Lucas van Leyden’s Passion of 1521. Christ stands high on a cloud in the middle of the sheet, framed by billowing clouds.
He raises his hand and holds a banner on a long staff. Below, two guards in helmets and caps start up beside the tomb, one throwing up his arm.
From the text
- A great earthquake; an angel rolled away the stone (Matthew 28:2)
- The guards trembled and became like dead men (Matthew 28:4)
- “He is not here; He has risen” (Matthew 28:6)
The artist’s own
- Christ rising with a banner — the Gospels do not describe the moment itself; this is how painters of the time showed it
- Guards in the caps and armour of Lucas’s day
Details
Christ
The banner
A banner on a long staff.
A guard
He sits by the tomb.
Another guard
He throws up his arm.
Lucas van Leyden, Netherlandish, 1494–about 1533. The Cleveland Museum of Art (Dudley P. Allen Fund, 1923.55.14) · Engraving · Cleveland Museum of Art Open Access: Collection API record "share_license_status": "CC0" (Creative Commons Zero, https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/).