Joachim Wtewael, 'The Raising of Lazarus', about 1605-10

This is a scene of high drama. A crowd surrounds a hole in the ground, marvelling as a naked man climbs out of it. Above him a bearded man, wearing a purple robe and red cloak, gestures towards him with his left hand, while the right is upturned towards heaven. Although there are no haloes, nor any other sign of sanctity, this is a religious painting. The bearded man is Jesus and he is looking down at Lazarus, the brother of his friends Mary and Martha.

According to the Gospel of John (11:1–44), Mary and Martha contacted Jesus to tell him that their brother was ill. Jesus promised to visit as soon as he could, but by the time he arrived, Lazarus was already dead. Jesus went to the tomb, asked for the stone covering it to be removed and called for Lazarus to ‘come forth’, even though he had been dead for four days. Lazarus emerged, still wrapped in the shroud in which he had been buried. Joachim Wtewael showed him pushing down with his arms to clamber out of the tomb. One end of the shroud has fallen over the stone, runs under his raised right calf and wraps around his left leg. Some more of the white fabric partially covers his head. Wtewael used this figure to display his skill in painting the human form with exaggerated musculature in a contorted pose. The bright, clashing colours of the clothing add to the drama of the scene, breaking up the picture surface and keeping our eyes moving from place to place, as do the contrasting areas of light and dark, and the strongly foreshortened limbs.

These features are all elements of a style or taste in Renaissance art called Mannerism. Although the drama is well suited to the scene, you could argue that Wtewael aimed to show off his abilities as an artist rather than to tell the story as clearly as possible. After all, it is impossible to say who most of the people in the painting are, and the characters included in the biblical narrative are not necessarily in the painting. Given that both Mary and Martha should be present, it is unclear whether they are seen here. The Gospel says that Mary ‘fell down’ at Jesus’s feet (John 11:32), and she might be the young woman in a crimson robe and with her right hand resting on her heart as a sign of her devotion. But she looks away from Christ, as Martha does in Sebastiano del Piombo’s Raising of Lazarus, and misses her brother’s miraculous resurrection. Mary might then be the woman in the right foreground, wearing a blue bodice, red skirt and yellow overskirt, kneeling down. The Christian Bible does not mention that either had a child, so the woman behind Jesus, wearing an elaborate disk-shaped hat, is unlikely to be Martha. However, her hat, decorated with a cross, could in some ways be seen as ‘standing in’ for Jesus’s halo.