The Lamentation and Preparation for Burial of Christ

Despite the old attribution to Poussin, this sheet is related to a late painting by Jacques Stella (1596-1657), which appeared on the market in 2005 and is now in the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. Sylvain Lavessiere noted that the subject is unusual, a moment between the deposition and the entombment when Christ's body is washed. He suggested that a sheet in the Louvre, also annotated “Poussin” but currently attributed to Eustache de la Sueur, might be related to the canvas given that it also depicts the nocturnal cleansing of the dead Christ (30640). Lavessiere also recorded a drawn copy after the painted composition that was sold in 2002 and is now in an American private collection. While Stella's late drawing style can be very broad, and he often used gray wash, the execution of this sheet points to his nephew Antoine Bouzonnet Stella, a suggestion made by Alvin L. Clark in 2004.