Mantegna's Lamentation Over The Dead Christ

A magnificent case of the utilization of foreshortening, the 'Lamentation Over the Dead Christ' is a Renaissance painting made by the Italian Renaissance craftsman Andrea Mantegna in around the 1480s. This gem is not at all like other masterpieces (for instance, different Lamentations) made at the time. Mantegna's utilization of foreshortening just lifts his work of art from the crowd.
The Lamentation of the Dead Christ is an oil painting on canvas, unlike most artistic creations of the period. It is a near monochromatic vision of Christ. The work of art has a minimal use of tonal shading: partly pink, gray and brilliant golden-brown. The setting of the composition is by all accounts a morgue-like and claustrophobic space with its hostile dreary walls. This dark space strengthens the pallor of the body. The mighty painting is of the corpse of Christ laid out on a marble slab. Mantegna has played with the principles of point of view making the head big, though if the rules of perspective were followed, the feet would be far larger than the head. There is an exceptional foreshortening of the body which makes it seem overwhelming and heavy.
The theme of the work of art is unlike that in medieval and Renaissance art. Dissimilar to most Lamentations that
This painting is about the brutal reality of death--the completion of natural life. This could possibly be the true meaning of the work of art. Mantegna asks the viewer an important question to think about. He gives us this picture of the corpse of Jesus as an symbol—He is immortalized by his mortality, but not permanently. While the viewer waits for Christ to come back to lie, they know that His unmoving cold flesh creates an important paradox: Christ is dead but not defeated. This idea is portrayed as a powerful image--Lamentation Over the Dead