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Joseph of Arimathea takes Jesus's dead body down from the cross.
Huc sese in medios Arimathes urbis alumnus------------
infert, conscenditque trabem, atque exangue magistri
detrahit, et densis procul aufert corpus ab armis, [70]
veste tegens, modò quam tales mercatus in usus.
Huc volucres pueri, cœlique effusa iuventus
ferte pedem: aeterni largum date veris honorem:
pallentem violam calathis diffundite plenis,
narcissique comas, ac mœrentes hyacinthos, [75]
et florum nimbo divinum involvite corpus.
Ecce autem latè reboant plangore propinqui
fœmineo montes: responsant flebile saltus:
omnia flere putes sola lamentabile letum.
Ipsa sedet vivo genitrix mœstissima saxo [80]
aegro corde, comis passis, totoque cruentum
heu! natum complexa sinu, miserabile corpus;
atque oculos fovet ore, patensque in pectore vulnus:
Nec iam ullos gemitus, nec iam ullos amplius edit
singultus, magno se denim exanimate dolore. [85]
Frigida, muta silet, gelidoque simillima saxo.
circumstant aliae tunsae omnes pectora palmis:
pars calidis corpusque lavant et vulnera lymphis:
textilibus membra involvunt pars squalida donis.
Haec siccat fuso rorantia genua capillo [90]
vulneribus super accumbens haerensque cruentis:
oscula dat manibus, pedibusque rigentibus illa.
Indulgent omnes lacrymis, tristique ululatu
cuncta replent: vix inde viri divellere possunt
ipsi etiam guttis humentes grandibus ora. [95]
tum corpus miseras solati exangue sepulcro
condunt marmoreo, atque affati extrema recedunt;
et magnam comites genitricem in tecta reportant.
Into their midst came the Arimathaean------------
to mount the beam, and bring down his master’s
lifeless body, and carry it from those armed men, [70]
wrapped in a shroud he had bought for that purpose.
Come quick, winged youths, down from the stars
to him: honour him with eternal springtime:
In laden baskets bring pale violets,
shaggy narcissus and mournful hyacinth, [75]
and scatter his divine body with blooms!
Now everywhere re-echoed with lament and
mountain passes answered the weeping women:
It seemed everywhere mourned that pitiable death.
His grieving mouther sat on a bare rock [80]
her heart ill, her hair dishevelled, red with blood
—alas!—from the son she cradled in her arms;
she kissed his eyes, and the wound in his breast:
She no longer even groaned or sighed
overwhelmed by the enormity of her loss [85]
lifeless in her sorrow, silent as cold stone.
Around her the other women beat their breasts:
some washed the body’s wounds with warm water:
others brought textiles to clothe his wrecked body.
One mopped up his spilled blood with her hair [90]
bending over his knees and embracing them;
another kissed his frozen hands and feet.
They gave way to their grief, tearful wailing,
filling that place. Men could hardly pull them
away, looking on, their eyes heavy with tears. [95]
Comforting the sad, they entombed the body
in a marble sepulchre, and withdrew;
his mother was led back to her home again.
Here, as one of Vida's sources, is the final portion of John 19:
After this, Joseph of Arimathea, being a disciple of Jesus, but secretly, for fear of the Jews, asked Pilate that he might take away the body of Jesus; and Pilate gave him permission. So he came and took the body of Jesus. And Nicodemus, who at first came to Jesus by night, also came, bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about a hundred pounds. Then they took the body of Jesus, and bound it in strips of linen with the spices, as the custom of the Jews is to bury. Now in the place where He was crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb in which no one had yet been laid. So there they laid Jesus, because of the Jews’ Preparation Day, for the tomb was nearby. [John 19: 38-42]The scene in which Mary cradles her dead, adult son is known (of course) as the Pietà. It is a very common figure in Renaissance paintings and sculpture, although I'm not so aware of the literary tradition in this respect. Vida's few lines are tasteful in their pathos, though Gardner notes that line 82, heu! natum complexa sinu, miserabile corpus draws on Vergil's Haec ubi deflevit, tolli miserabile corpus, ‘thus lamenting they carried his unhappy body’.
The resonance of the Pietà depends, in part, on the way the image of the grieving Mary holding her dead son rhymes visually, as it were, with the image of the joyful Mary holding her newborn son. The two bookend her, and his, life (except for the transcendental get-out-of-jail-free card that is, at this point in the story, yet to come). Vida, by skimping on the descriptive details, avoids the major problem that visual artists have, which is that whilst a woman cradling a baby looks proportionate a woman cradling a full-grown man does not, and can veer inappositely into the ludicrous. Here, for instance, is Pietro Perugino's ‘Pietà’ (c.1490; in the Uffizi):
Pretty precarious balancing, there. One alternative, equally risky in the inadvertent-bathos department, is to shrink-down the cradled figure:
An early 15th-C Rhineland wooden sculpture, there; but whether the deal here is a dwarf-Jesus, or a Hagrid-big Mary it looks disconcerting. A way round the problem was to insert otherss into the scene, helping Mary with her big burden, as with the image at the head of this post: Bronzino's ‘Deposition of Christ’ (1545).
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