The Deposition

Raphael at 24, commissioned by Atalanta Baglioni in memory of her murdered son Grifonetto. The composition is a homage to Michelangelo — the twisted bearer at left echoes the Sistine ignudi — but the emotional current is Raphael's own. The Virgin faints on the right in a pyramid of grief; Christ's body is a diagonal of dead weight. Look at the bearer's braced legs and the strain in every neck: this is a body genuinely heavy to carry.