Identity and catalogue
Link- Movement or period
- Baroque
- Country or culture
- Italian
- Depicted subject
- The painting depicts the entombment of Christ. The dead body of Christ is laid diagonally across the foreground, supported by several figures including Nicodemus, John the Apostle, Mary, Mary Jacobi, and Mary Magdalene.(Wikimedia Commons: The Entombment, n.d.)
- Title variants
- The Entombment; Deposizione; La Mise au tombeau; Die Grablegung Christi; O Sepultamento de Cristo
- Support
- Canvas
Catalogue identity
The work catalogued here is The Entombment of Christ, attributed to Caravaggio, the name under which the artist Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio is recorded. The painting carries the accession number MV.40386, and it is dated from 1602 until 1604. The recorded dimensions are 300 cm by 203 cm, equivalent to 118.1 in by 79.9 in. These are the basic identifying facts of the object as the source record states them: title, artist name in both its common and fuller forms, an accession identifier, a date range, and a measured size.(Wikimedia Commons: The Entombment, n.d.)
Interpretation
Two distinct kinds of dating should be kept apart in this record. The span 1602 to 1604 belongs to the making of the painting itself, as the source presents it. The accession number MV.40386 belongs to the object's later registration as a museum holding, and the source names the Pinacoteca Vaticana in Vatican City as the collection in which it is now held. Nothing supplied here fixes a specific year of accession or of any earlier transfer, so the interval between the painting's execution and its cataloguing under that number remains unstated in the evidence.(Wikimedia Commons: The Entombment, n.d.)
The medium recorded for the work is oil on canvas, and its subject is the entombment of Christ. Beyond the title subject, the source identifies the depicted figures as Jesus Christ, Nicodemus, John the Apostle, Mary, Mary Jacobi, and Mary Magdalene. Those identifications are what the catalogue record establishes about the picture's content; they supply the named participants in the scene without going further into how each figure is arranged or what each does.(Wikimedia Commons: The Entombment, n.d.)
Subject and iconography
LinkThe Depicted Scene and Its Figures
Visual observation
The painting depicts the entombment of Christ, the moment at which his dead body is placed in the tomb. The people shown are identified as Jesus Christ, Nicodemus, John the Apostle, Mary, Mary Jacobi, and Mary Magdalene. These names establish the scene as a scriptural and devotional subject in which the bearing of the body is distributed among several figures rather than assigned to one mourner, and they also establish the presence of both male disciples and the women who remain with the body. The account of the subject is an observation drawn from the source record rather than an inference from the surviving image alone, and so the identification of each figure should be treated as the source's identification of the depicted persons rather than as a description whose every label the present evidence independently verifies.(Wikimedia Commons: The Entombment, n.d.)
Medium, Scale and Setting
The medium of the picture is oil on canvas, a support and technique belonging to the same early seventeenth century production context in which the entombment is described. Because the medium is documented for this painting, it connects the visual account to the material evidence: the composition of a group carrying and lowering a body, described as the entombment of Christ and peopled by Jesus Christ, Nicodemus, John the Apostle, Mary, Mary Jacobi and Mary Magdalene, is executed in oil on canvas rather than in another medium. The relationship between the visible scene and the physical object is therefore not merely thematic; the choice of oil on canvas is a documented material fact about the same work whose subject is the burial of Christ.(Wikimedia Commons: The Entombment, n.d.)
Method in This Account
Interpretation
The evidence for the picture's appearance and meaning is uneven in kind and should be kept so. The entombment as a subject and the roster of six named persons are observations recorded by the source, whereas the medium of oil on canvas is documented. Neither class of evidence, as supplied here, includes technical imaging results, condition records, or a history of the picture's appearance over time, so no claim can be made in this account about pentimenti, abrasion, discoloration or later intervention. What can be stated is the convergence of the two evidence types on the same object: the oil-on-canvas work is the work that shows the entombment of Christ with Nicodemus, John the Apostle, Mary, Mary Jacobi and Mary Magdalene. This convergence supports treating the subject and the named figures as integral to the object's visual evidence, while leaving open any question about how the surface was made or has altered.(Wikimedia Commons: The Entombment, n.d.)
Materials and technique
LinkDocumented materials and support
The Entombment of Christ by Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio) is executed in oil on canvas, a medium and support recorded in the source for the painting. The same source dates the work from 1602 until 1604 and places it in the collection of the Pinacoteca Vaticana, Vatican City, under accession number MV.40386. The recording of oil on canvas is a documented material statement, and it establishes both the binding medium class and the textile support; it also aligns the object with the dominant practice of early seventeenth-century Italian painting rather than with panel supports. The dimensions are given as 300 cm by 203 cm (118.1 in by 79.9 in), establishing a large upright format for the composition.(Wikimedia Commons: The Entombment, n.d.)
Interpretation
Within the larger history of Baroque art, this oil-on-canvas Entombment matters because it belongs to a period and to a medium in which large religious narrative paintings were increasingly produced for display within churches and collections, and because its current home in the Pinacoteca Vaticana marks its later institutional reception. The source's metadata identifies the work with the Entombment of Christ and the Baroque period, and the compositional subject has been documented as the entombment of Christ, showing the body being laid into the tomb. That the painted figures include Jesus Christ, Nicodemus, John the Apostle, Mary, Mary Jacobi, and Mary Magdalene establishes the narrative personnel of the scene and connects the material object to a specific devotional subject. These identifications are supplied as contextual and visual observations, so they inform why the canvas was made but do not by themselves document the materials or making technique beyond the oil-on-canvas record.(Wikimedia Commons: The Entombment, n.d.)
Documented values and qualified estimates
LinkThe Object and Its Recorded Context
Interpretation
The Entombment of Christ by Caravaggio, that is Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, is dated in the supplied context to c. 1602-1604 and described as an oil on canvas of 300 by 203 cm, a Baroque Italian work held in the Pinacoteca Vaticana, Vatican City, under accession number MV.40386. The same source names the depicted figures as Jesus Christ, Nicodemus, John the Apostle, Mary, Mary Jacobi, and Mary Magdalene, and identifies the subject as the entombment of Christ. The sole supplied evidence unit for this section takes exactly this identification and collection data as its confirmed context, so the identification of artist, subject, medium, approximate date and repository, rather than being argued in the valuation evidence itself, is the fixed point from which its calculations proceed. No public sale price, official appraisal or private insurance record appears in the supplied context, and the source excerpts are described as providing identification context only.(Wikimedia Commons: The Entombment, n.d.)
The Insurance Working Range and Its Method
The one valuation figure the supplied evidence establishes is a calculated working insurance estimate of US$100M to US$300M, recorded as a working calculation generated on 2026-10-16. Its stated methodology is deliberately indirect: because the work is an institutional holding with no public sale or official appraisal in the supplied context, the range is derived conservatively from the work's canonical status, scale, artist prominence and period significance, and for manual insurance review only. The evidence states explicitly that no comparable auction results or private insurance records were available or used. This matters methodologically because the range is not a market observation; it is a model-generated construction from qualitative attributes whose components are named in the evidence rather than measured against transactions.(Wikimedia Commons: The Entombment, n.d.)
The qualifications attached to the range are as consequential as the numbers. The evidence specifies that the range is not an official insurance value, appraisal, auction result or sale price; that it does not represent a quote or coverage amount; and that it should not be used for binding insurance, financial, tax or legal purposes. It further states that actual insurance values for institutional artworks require professional appraisal, provenance verification, condition assessment and specialist market analysis. Read together with the methodology above, these qualifications define the range as an internal working instrument for manual review, and any use of the figure should carry the same limits the evidence places on it.(Wikimedia Commons: The Entombment, n.d.)
Why the Object Matters
Value in this record is a product of institutional standing rather than transaction history. The evidence grounds its range in the work's canonical status, its scale of 300 by 203 cm, the prominence of Caravaggio, and the significance of the c. 1602-1604 Baroque Italian period in which it was made, and it notes that the painting belongs to a highly prominent museum collection. The accession number MV.40386 and the Pinacoteca Vaticana location are the concrete institutional facts through which the work is identified as such a holding. The absence of sale and appraisal data is therefore not a gap in the object's documentation so much as a condition of its institutional existence, and the conservative derivation reflects that condition.(Wikimedia Commons: The Entombment, n.d.)
The evidence supplied for this section contains a single primary unit, a working interpretation rather than a documentary or market record, while the object-specific facts it depends on (artist, title, date, medium, dimensions, period, collection and accession number) come from its stated source context. The account should therefore be read as an accumulating research record in which the identification framework is stable and the valuation line remains explicitly provisional and dated. Treating the 2026-10-16 range as if it were the work's value would conflate a manual review calculation with the documented record; treating the identification data as beyond question would also exceed the evidence, which describes its source excerpts as identification context only and its own range as model-generated. The measured position is to keep the identification and the calculation distinct, each described at the evidential level the unit assigns to it.(Wikimedia Commons: The Entombment, n.d.)
Working estimate
Calculated working insurance estimate, not a sale price: Estimated value: US$100M to US$300M Recorded date: Working calculation, generated 2026-10-16. Methodology: This broad working range is calculated for manual insurance review only. It uses the confirmed context: Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio), The Entombment of Christ, c. 1602-1604, oil on canvas, 300 x 203 cm, Baroque Italian, held in the Pinacoteca Vaticana, Vatican City, accession number MV.40386, a highly prominent museum collection work. Because the work is an institutional holding with no public sale or official appraisal in the supplied context, the range is derived conservatively from the work's canonical status, scale, artist prominence, and period significance. No comparable auction results or private insurance records were available or used. Qualification: This is a model-generated working range for manual review only. It is not an official insurance value, appraisal, auction result, or sale price. It does not represent a quote or coverage amount and should not be used for binding insurance, financial, tax, or legal purposes. Actual insurance values for institutional artworks require professional appraisal, provenance verification, condition assessment, and specialist market analysis. Source excerpts provide identification context only and do not contain a public valuation.(Wikimedia Commons: The Entombment, n.d.)
