by Tom Gurney
Tom Gurney BSc (Hons) is an art history expert with over 20 years experience
Published on June 19, 2020 / Updated on October 14, 2026
Email: tomgurney1@gmail.com / Phone: +44 7429 011000
A body carried through a narrow space
Christ's body lies across a wide fold of cloth. The people around him carry its weight toward a place of burial. One figure bends near his head, another works at the far side, and the cloth gathers beneath him. The composition is crowded, but its central action is unmistakable: a dead body is being moved with care. Rubens made that action the subject of this small, upright drawing.
The Rijksmuseum[1] catalogues the sheet as Graflegging, or The Entombment, by Peter Paul Rubens, dated 1615–17. Its object number is RP-T-1899-A-4301. It measures only 222 × 153 millimetres, or 22.2 × 15.3 centimetres, and is made with pen and brush in brown ink on paper. The museum's subject description calls it the bearing of Christ's body to the grave. Those details identify the object more securely than the broad English title alone, which has been used for many drawings and paintings.
The modest sheet offers a remarkably physical account of a sacred event. It does not need a painted sky or a large landscape to establish its subject. The supported body, carrying figures and enveloping cloth do most of the work. The narrow format pulls them together so that the viewer confronts the effort of handling Christ rather than surveying a distant scene.
At a Glance
- ArtistPeter Paul Rubens [1][2]
- Date1615–17 [1][2]
- MediumPen and brush in brown ink on paper [1][2]
- Size222 × 153 mm [1][2]
- SubjectBearing Christ's body to the grave [1]
- CollectionRijksmuseum, RP-T-1899-A-4301 [1][2]
Where this work sits in Rubens's career
The Elevation of the Cross
1609–10The Descent from the Cross
1611–14The Entombment
1615–17The Garden of Love
1630–35The Three Graces
1630–35Contents
- The story behind the action
- How the composition moves
- Pen, brush and brown ink
- A small object with an intense subject
- The title and the object number
- What the attribution says
- Keeping this Entombment distinct
- Looking again at the drawing
The story behind the action
In John 19:38–42[3], Joseph of Arimathea obtains permission to take Jesus' body; Nicodemus joins him; the body is wrapped for burial and placed in a nearby tomb. Rubens's drawing belongs to that interval between removal from the cross and burial. The biblical account gives the narrative setting, while the drawing concentrates on the visible act of carrying.
The Gospel does not tell us exactly how every person stood or how the body was supported at each moment. Rubens's arrangement is therefore an artistic construction of the scene, not an illustration from an eyewitness diagram. The men lean and reach around the body, turning a sequence of actions described in words into one concentrated moment. What the artist selects is the human labour of burial.
The cloth has a practical and visual role. It gathers the body into a form that can be lifted, while its broad pale areas make Christ legible among the darker strokes of the surrounding figures. In John's account, linen belongs to the preparation for burial. The drawing need not show a specific instant of wrapping to make that connection useful: cloth is what helps the group carry the body and what links the act of transport to the burial that follows.
It is tempting to name each carrier from the Gospel, but the Rijksmuseum does not identify individual figures on the sheet. Joseph and Nicodemus are central to John's story; attaching those names to specific heads or hands in this drawing would claim more than the object record supports. The sheet is clearer about a shared task than about a roster of individual identities.
How the composition moves
Begin at Christ's head and follow the length of his body. The torso and legs make a diagonal across the middle of the page, giving the group a direction of travel. The cloth follows that diagonal, then changes course in folds that curve around the carriers. It acts almost like a map of force: hands pull, bodies bend, and fabric responds to the weight being moved.
The upright sheet creates pressure around the group. There is little unused space at either side, so the figures feel close to the body and to one another. Rather than isolating Christ in an empty foreground, Rubens lets the carriers press inward. Their attention is directed toward the same fragile burden. This proximity gives the scene its seriousness.
Dark marks collect at some points and thin out at others. Near the upper bodies, strokes make heads, arms and background difficult to separate on first glance. The effect can feel abrupt when viewed small. Look longer and the central body and cloth provide a stable path through the drawing. Rubens uses varied density to make the eye alternate between the solid task of carrying and the shifting space around it.
The background suggests an enclosed or rocky setting rather than a broad outdoor panorama. It does not compete for attention with the people. The visual question is how the group negotiates a confined area with a body between them. We can describe that pressure without claiming the sheet documents the precise architecture of a particular tomb.
Christ is still; the others are active. That contrast is common to the entombment subject, but it is especially strong here because the carrier figures are built from quick, directional marks. They seem to keep adjusting as they move, while the body remains the fixed centre of their effort. The drawing asks the viewer to measure their motion against his immobility.
Pen, brush and brown ink
The Rijksmuseum describes the medium as pen and brush in brown ink. A pen can define a contour or quick structural line; a brush can lay broader, softer passages. On this sheet, the mixture lets outlines and dark masses cooperate. The image has the immediacy of a drawing, yet parts of it feel almost like tonal painting in miniature.
The colour is brown rather than a system of painted flesh tones, blue sky and coloured clothes. Figures must be separated by line, value and placement. In a monochrome image, the cloth gains particular force: its lighter paper areas stand against the dark strokes used to gather the mourners and the setting. The material limitation becomes a way to direct attention.
This is a drawing on paper, not an oil painting that has merely been reproduced in sepia. The distinction matters because the eye should expect open paper, rapid line and visible changes of pressure. Marks that might look unfinished in a polished canvas can be central to a drawing's energy. The scene emerges from those marks rather than from a fully smoothed surface.
The museum gives no specific purpose for this sheet. It does not call it a preparatory drawing for a named painting in its online record. Drawings can test composition, record ideas, serve patrons or circulate independently, and the surviving facts here do not decide among those possibilities. The safest reading starts with what the sheet itself does: it organizes a group around the movement of Christ's body.
A small object with an intense subject
At 22.2 centimetres high, the sheet invites close viewing. The figures occupy a space smaller than an ordinary notebook page, yet the subject carries the emotional scale of the Passion narrative. Rubens compresses the event instead of expanding it into a monumental altarpiece. The viewer meets the scene almost at arm's length.
That close scale changes how the marks are read. From farther away, Christ and the cloth form one main diagonal shape. At closer range, separate heads, hands and bends in the fabric begin to appear. The movement from overall design to small detail echoes the subject itself: a shared action becomes a set of individual physical efforts.
The narrow vertical format also keeps the carriers from spreading into a theatrical procession. Their bodies overlap. There is no wide stage on which each person can pose independently. The action is collective, and the group's closeness conveys both urgency and care. These are observations about the visible arrangement, not claims about the private feelings of identifiable people in the drawing.
An entombment can be pictured as a completed burial, with Christ already lying in a tomb. Here the Rijksmuseum's subject wording emphasises bearing the body to the grave. That is a meaningful distinction. The picture concerns passage: the body has been taken down but has not yet disappeared into the sepulchre. The weight of the dead figure remains in the hands of the living.
The title and the object number
Graflegging is the Rijksmuseum's Dutch title. The Entombment is an English way of naming the same biblical subject. Neither title alone identifies this sheet, because Rubens and many other artists addressed Christ's burial repeatedly. The object number RP-T-1899-A-4301 is the useful anchor for this particular drawing.
The Vereniging Rembrandt's record[2] independently identifies Rubens, the 1615–17 date, brown pen and brush, the 22.2 × 15.3 cm size and the Rijksmuseum location. It also names the same inventory number. This second institutional record confirms that we are discussing the small Amsterdam sheet, not a different picture with a similar title.
The Rijksmuseum records acquisition by purchase in December 1899. Its current online record gives the object's public domain status. Those facts describe the collection entry; they do not establish the origin of every digital copy of the image. For a reader, the practical point is that the drawing is identifiable in a public collection and can be checked against a stable museum record.
Collection history is sometimes condensed into a single date. Here it is better to keep the museum's acquisition date precise and avoid inventing a complete chain of ownership before it. The Vereniging Rembrandt page lists a Jacob de Vos collection sale in 1883, but the online sources do not explain every intervening step in the sheet's movement to the Rijksmuseum. What is firm is the museum's present cataloguing and its recorded 1899 purchase.
What the attribution says
The Rijksmuseum names Rubens as draughtsman. In the detailed catalogue fields, it also lists Anthony van Dyck with the qualification “rejected attribution.” That is a record of an earlier attribution being rejected, not a statement that Rubens and Van Dyck drew this sheet together. The current artist label remains Rubens.
This nuance is easy to lose when a database places two names in nearby fields. An unqualified list of makers would misrepresent the museum's position. The bracketed Dutch phrase is part of the evidence, because it tells us how the second name is being used. It documents the history of cataloguing rather than a second hand at work on the paper.
Attributions of old drawings can change as museums compare style, materials and documented objects. The Rijksmuseum entry does not supply a full argument on the public page for accepting Rubens and rejecting Van Dyck. The article therefore reports the catalogue's current conclusion without inventing a technical proof. A future catalogue revision could add evidence, but nothing in the present page requires the reader to choose between two current artists.
Keeping this Entombment distinct
Rubens returned to Passion subjects in different forms. A search for “Rubens Entombment” may lead to paintings, oil sketches, drawings or photographs of other works. This page concerns the Rijksmuseum paper drawing of 1615–17. Its scale, material and inventory number distinguish it from those other objects.
In particular, the Amsterdam sheet should not automatically be described as a study for a specific Entombment painting elsewhere. A shared subject does not prove a workshop relationship. The current Rijksmuseum record gives no such link, and the drawing is dated later than some well-known painted versions. The sheet deserves to be read as the object it is before it is attached to another work's story.
That does not make comparison useless. Looking at other entombment images can show the many ways an artist might frame removal, carrying, lamentation and burial. But comparison should begin with accurate labels. If another museum's object has a different date, support or compositional arrangement, it remains a different work even when the title sounds identical.
The word entombment can also hide a sequence of moments. Removal from the cross, carrying toward the grave, preparation of the body and placing it in the tomb are related but distinct actions. The Rijksmuseum's own subject field points specifically to bearing. That focused description helps us see why the carriers' gestures and the cloth matter more here than an identifiable stone coffin or a finished grave.
Looking again at the drawing
Start with the long pale form of Christ's body. Follow the cloth beneath it, then look for the people who hold or guide it. Notice how the lines around their shoulders and arms make the group feel compressed. Return to the body and ask which marks make it seem still amid the surrounding movement.
The scene is solemn without relying on a detailed landscape or a list of named mourners. Rubens gives the event a physical centre. The carriers' coordinated effort and the bending cloth make the moment between death and burial visible. Its small format asks for a close, slow reading.
This is Peter Paul Rubens's Graflegging, a pen-and-brush drawing in brown ink on paper, made 1615–17 and now in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. The institution catalogues the subject as Christ's body being borne to the grave. The object number RP-T-1899-A-4301 secures its identity. Everything else on this page begins with those facts and with the visible work of lifting and carrying at the centre of the sheet.
Rubens artworks directory
Frequently Asked Questions
No. The Rijksmuseum catalogues it as a drawing made with pen and brush in brown ink on paper.
The Rijksmuseum dates the sheet 1615–17. The Vereniging Rembrandt gives the same range.
It measures 222 × 153 mm, or 22.2 × 15.3 cm. It is a small upright sheet.
The Rijksmuseum describes the subject as bearing Christ's body to the grave. The drawing focuses on the people supporting and carrying him.
John's Gospel names those men in the burial narrative, but the Rijksmuseum does not identify individual figures on the sheet. The specific heads and hands should therefore remain unnamed.
The museum names Rubens as draughtsman. It records Van Dyck only under a rejected attribution, which is part of the object's catalogue history.
The Rijksmuseum's online record does not identify a specific painting for which this was a study. A shared subject is not enough to establish that relationship.
It is in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, under object number RP-T-1899-A-4301. The museum records its purchase in December 1899.
Discussion
Trace the cloth and Christ's diagonal body through the group of carriers.
Share an observation about the drawing or a reliable source that adds to its history.
Reader Insights
How do the carriers' gestures convey the body's weight?
What does the narrow format do to the sense of movement?
Why is the Rijksmuseum object number useful when comparing Entombment images?
Join the Conversation
Add your reading below, keeping observations specific and evidence clear.
References
- Rijksmuseum, Graflegging , RP-T-1899-A-4301. View source
- Vereniging Rembrandt, Graflegging , Rubens, 1615–17. View source
- John 19:38–42, burial of Jesus. View source
