Detail of Dead Christ with Angels by Manet in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, December 2023

Title: The Dead Christ with Angels

Artist: Edouard Manet (French, Paris 1832–1883 Paris)

Date: 1864

Medium: Oil on canvas

Dimensions: 70 5/8 x 59 in. (179.4 x 149.9 cm)

Classification: Paintings

Credit Line: H. O. Havemeyer Collection, Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929

Object Number: 29.100.51


In the mid-1860s, Manet made an ambitious foray into religious painting, beginning with his submission of this work to the Salon of 1864. Inspired by Andrea del Sarto’s Christ as the Man of Sorrows (ca. 1525), which he copied in Florence, Manet incorporated the two angels described in the Gospel according to Saint John, inscribing the New Testament citation on the rock in the foreground. Critics denounced the picture, particularly referencing the realism of Christ’s cadaverous body, and faulted Manet for depicting Christ’s wound on the wrong side. Degas later admired the work for its “real drawing” and the “transparent quality of the paint.”


Text from: www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/436950