The Three Marys at the Tomb

Painted in 1818 on canvas and now in the Bavarian State Painting Collections, The Three Marys at the Tomb depicts the moment in all four Gospels when Mary Magdalene and her companions arrive at Christ's sepulchre and find it empty, confronted by an angel announcing the Resurrection. The subject was standard in medieval and Renaissance altarpiece painting and Cornelius's treatment in 1818 — just after completing the Casa Bartholdy frescoes — shows him applying the figural ambition of the fresco medium back to easel painting. Three women in varied emotional states — shock, grief, dawning joy — allowed Cornelius to demonstrate the psychological range that large-scale history painting required. The Bavarian State Painting Collections, which hold masterpieces of German and European art across multiple Munich museums, situate this as a key document of the Romantic religious revival.

Three figures in shallow space before an architectural or landscape backdrop required Cornelius to differentiate the women through posture, gesture, and expression rather than spatial depth. His oil handling here is more linear and graphic than painterly, consistent with the Nazarene primacy of disegno over colore.