High Relief: Deposition of Christ

myminifactory

This curved relief depicts the deposition of Christ. It is the scene from the Gospels' accounts of Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus taking Christ down from the cross after his crucifixion. In Byzantine art the topic became popular in the 9th century, and in the West from the 10th century. The Descent from the Cross is the 13th Station of the Cross. Other figures not mentioned in the Gospels who are often included in depictions of this subject include St. John the Evangelist, who is sometimes depicted supporting a fainting Mary, and Mary Magdalene. The Gospels mention an undefined number of women as watching the crucifixion, including the Three Marys, and also that the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene saw the burial. These and further women and unnamed male helpers are often shown. Saint Isaac's Cathedral or Isaakievskiy Sobor in Saint Petersburg, Russia, is the largest Russian Orthodox cathedral in the city. It is the largest orthodox basilica and the fourth largest (by the volume under the cupola) cathedral in the world. It is dedicated to Saint Isaac of Dalmatia, a patron saint of Peter the Great, who had been born on the feast day of that saint.The church on St Isaac's Square was ordered by Tsar Alexander I, to replace an earlier structure by Vincenzo Brenna, and was the fifth consecutive church standing at this place. The cathedral took 40 years to construct, under Montferrand's direction, from 1818 to 1858. The neoclassical exterior expresses the traditional Russian-Byzantine formula of a Greek-cross ground plan with a large central dome and four subsidiary domes.