The Entombment

This Entombment by the Master of San Martino alla Palma, painted around 1320, depicts the burial of Christ in a composition of restrained grief. This anonymous Florentine painter takes his name from works in the church of San Martino alla Palma near Florence, and he belongs to the generation of artists who worked in the immediate wake of Giotto's revolution. Now in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, the panel reflects the rapid dissemination of Giottesque narrative methods through the workshops of lesser-known Florentine masters.

Egg tempera and gold on panel with a compact narrative composition arranging mourning figures around the body of Christ. The Master of San Martino alla Palma employs Giottesque volumetric modeling in a simplified form, with clear contours and restrained gestures conveying solemn devotion.