The entombment of Christ by Jean de Rouen, a mysterious work and a case of formal transmigration

Abstract

In the early forties, Jean de Rouen sculpted a spectacular Depositio in the city of Coimbra. Even if the recent historiography claims to integrate this artwork in the Chapel of the Holy Sepulchre from the monastic church of Santa Cruz (currently in the Museu Nacional de Machado de Castro — MNMC, no E 109), the historical testimonies neglect this presence. In fact, since 1540, until the last years of the 19th century, there are no references to the monumental Entombment in Santa Cruz. These gaps have provoked my concern, and made me attempt to find more information about the historical fortune of this artwork. My goal is to compare the monumental group from Coimbra with some similar works built in French territory between the end of the 15th century and the first half of the 16th, and confront it with other sources of visual influence, as the tableaux vivant created in the (liturgical) theatres of the mysteries (common in Normandy at that time), and verify the historical fortune of this particular sculptural group.