Caravaggio created one of his most admired altarpieces, The Entombment of Christ, in 1603–1604 for the second chapel on the right in Santa Maria in Vallicella (the Chiesa Nuova), a church built for the Oratory of Saint Philip Neri.

[1] On 11 July 1575, Pope Gregory XIII (1572-1585) issued a bull confirming the formation of a new society called the Oratory and granting it the church of Santa Maria in Vallicella.

[1] The chapel in which the Entombment was to be hung, was dedicated to the Pietà, and was founded by Pietro Vittrice, a friend of Pope Gregory XIII and close follower of Filippo Neri.

Sometime after his death in March 1600, a legacy of 1,000 scudi became available for the maintenance of the chapel, and it was built in 1602, which is then held to be the earliest date for the commission of Caravaggio's painting.

It is through these connections that Girolamo's son, Alessandro, became bishop of Alatri in 1632, and was able to bestow the gift of Caravaggio's Fortune Teller (now in the Louvre) on Pope Innocent X Pamphilij after being appointed governor of Rome in 1647.

[5] The painting was universally admired and written about by such critics as Giulio Mancini,[a] Giovanni Baglione (1642),[8][b] Gian Pietro Bellori (1672)[9][c] and Francesco Scanelli (1657).

[5][7][e] This Counter-Reformation painting – with a diagonal cascade of mourners and cadaver-bearers descending to the limp, dead Christ and the bare stone – is not a moment of transfiguration, but of mourning.

John the Evangelist, identified only by his youthful appearance and red cloak supports the dead Christ on his right knee and with his right arm, inadvertently opening the wound.

Here, the dead God's fallen arm and immaculate shroud touch stone; the grieving Mary of Cleophas gesticulates to Heaven.

The figure of the Virgin Mary is also partially obscured behind John; we see her in the robes of a nun and her arms are held out to her side, imitating the line of the stone they stand upon.

This interpretation was based on heroic formula derived from antique sources, that of Adonis or Meleager: head thrown back and one arm hanging limply by the side.

The placing of Christ's body on a flat stone also had precedents in painting, notably Rogier van der Weyden's Lamentation in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence.

[3] On closer inspection, Caravaggio painting does not fit this formula, since these ancient types are transportation scenes, whereas his, as in Van der Weyden's case, is decidedly not.