The Resurrection

This painting depicts the miraculous moment of Christ’s resurrection, according to the Christian tradition. Carrying a flag and bathed in bright light cast down from Heaven, Christ appears from the sky as a host of angels pull apart the clouds. Soldiers guarding his tomb attempt to flee as they witness this miraculous event.  

While Sebastiano Ricci (1659-1734) spent most of his life in northern Italy, he took several foreign commissions in London and Paris during the 1710s. This painting, executed towards the end of Ricci's stay in London, around 1714-16, is one of two modelli, or oil sketches, for the fresco in the apse of the Chapel of the Royal Hospital, Chelsea. Some of the elements in these works seem to reference motifs by earlier generations of Italian artists including Paolo Veronese (the angels lifting the grave's lid), Annibale Carracci (the soldiers, the grave and the lantern) and Salvator Rosa (the cliffs in the background and the soldiers).