The Raising of Lazarus

The Raising of Lazarus, painted by Alessandro Turchi in 1617 and preserved at the Galleria Borghese in Rome, depicts Christ's most spectacular miracle — the restoration of the four-days-dead Lazarus to life (John 11) — in the same year as the artist's Lamentation, suggesting a period of sustained engagement with major New Testament subjects. The Galleria Borghese holds both works, providing an unusual opportunity to compare two paintings of the same period and to measure Turchi's approach to contrasting subjects: death mourned and death reversed. The Raising of Lazarus was a complex compositional challenge: multiple figures — the crowd, the sisters Martha and Mary, the disciples, and Christ commanding — surrounding the central figure of Lazarus emerging from the tomb. Turchi's version would have had to organize this crowd scene while sustaining focus on the miraculous act. The subject also carried typological resonance as a prefiguring of Christ's own Resurrection, making it particularly important in Counter-Reformation devotional programs.

Oil paint on what is likely a large canvas appropriate to the multi-figure narrative. The compositional challenge — organizing a crowd around the miracle — demands confident spatial management. Turchi's smooth modeling technique handles the varied figures with consistent quality, and the contrast between Lazarus's emerging figure and the responding crowd provides the dramatic axis.