The Resurrection of Christ

The Resurrection of Christ — depicting the moment when Christ rises bodily from the tomb, typically shown ascending or standing above the sleeping soldiers — was among the most doctrinally crucial and compositionally challenging of Passion subjects. Counter-Reformation theology emphasised the physical reality of the Resurrection against Protestant interpretations that might spiritualise or allegorise it, and Morales's treatment reflects this confessional context. Painted around 1566 and in the Prado, the work belongs to his mature Mannerist period. The Resurrection typically required painters to depict supernatural action — the raising of a body that had been dead — while maintaining the physical solidity that made the event theologically convincing. Morales's characteristic Mannerist elongation here serves the subject's transcendent character: a body that has conquered death need not obey normal proportional constraints. The sleeping soldiers around the tomb witness without comprehending, their unconscious state emphasising the event's divine rather than human character.

The Resurrection demands that Morales render a body simultaneously physical and transcendent — convincingly human yet clearly beyond normal bodily limitation. His elongated proportions and cool, slightly luminous flesh tones serve this double demand effectively. The risen Christ is often shown in light-coloured grave clothes or white drapery, providing Morales with an opportunity for his most delicate light-on-light rendering.