,
Resurrection (ca. 1560),
Chiesa di San Francesco della Vigna, Venice In the upper part of the canvas, a host of angels surrounds the risen Christ, who holds the banner of the cross in his left hand. A warm, supernatural light radiates from the clouds supporting the angels, contrasting with the misty, twilight atmosphere of the remaining background. Christ hovers above the tomb, which, underscoring the miracle in progress, is closed and sealed with a still-intact scroll. A soldier, in the background at the center of the composition, points out to a man in a turban the astonishing detail of the intact seal. Another soldier sleeps on the tombstone, placing all his weight on it, further evidence of the miraculous nature of the Lord's Resurrection. In the lower part of the canvas, other guards react in various ways to the event they are witnessing: some flee in amazement, while another sleeps, still unaware of the miracle. In depicting this group of soldiers, Annibale depicts a variety of poses that convey the excitement and dismay of this supreme moment. Annibale displays mastery of foreshortening in the plastic rendering of the Roman soldiers themselves. The furnishings – the rolling flask on the left, the bundle of arrows used as a pillow by the sleeper below, a lamp, and the soldiers' weapons – are rendered with extreme care almost as
still lifes within the sacred composition. The
Resurrection is the work in which the research conducted by Annibale in the previous years results in the achievement of a harmonious balance between the
Correggesque ascendant (to which the figure of Christ and in general the upper part of the painting can be associated) and the Venetian one. In addition to the sum of his past experiences, the canvas now at the Louvre seems to reveal Annibale's growing attention towards the classical which not long after would emerge more fully with the arrival of Carracci in Rome at the service of the Farnese family. ==References==