The Holy Women at the Tomb by William-Adolphe Bouguereau

The Holy Women at the Tomb by William-Adolphe Bouguereau

Easter morning, from the doorway

Three women have come to the tomb at first light with spices for a burial, and found the stone rolled back. Bouguereau paints the moment just after: Mary Magdalene and two companions caught at the threshold, one standing with her hand to her head, one kneeling with her hands clasped, one still holding the bowl she carried. What they have seen is inside — the tomb is full of light, and in it stands the angel who has just spoken, one arm raised.

It is a resurrection picture with no risen Christ in it. The event is told entirely through the people it happens to, which is the Gospel’s own method: “He is not here; he is risen.”

A Salon success

The canvas was shown at the Paris Salon of 1890 and then travelled — Stuttgart, Berlin, Chicago — before the Antwerp World’s Fair of 1894, after which it went to the city’s museum; Bouguereau was paid 23,500 francs for it, the same sum Cabanel had received. Bouguereau was at the height of his reputation, and this was among the works that made it.

Grief painted from the inside

Bouguereau knew mourning. By 1890 he had buried his first wife and several of his children, and his religious pictures of these years are noticeably quieter than the mythological work that made him famous. The three women here are not posed in attitudes of sorrow; they are simply people who have arrived expecting the worst and found something they cannot yet take in.

About this print

Made from the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp’s own scan of the painting, at 6,965 pixels on the long side — the highest-resolution Bouguereau reproduction available — which is what allows it to be offered up to 24 by 36 inches.

Sources: Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp (KMSKA), inv. 1580 · Wikidata Q21619643 · Wikimedia Commons