Acquisitions

Master’s Painting Joins Fountain Court

Detail from The Entombment, 1650–1653, oil on canvas, Luca Giordano, Italian, 1634–1705

A former altarpiece by 17th-century Italian master Luca Giordano has a new home at the Memorial Art Gallery as part of an initiative to make the gallery’s Herdle Fountain Court a centerpiece of Baroque visual and musical culture. The gallery purchased The Entombment (1650–1653), Giordano’s depiction of the New Testament scene of Jesus being placed in a tomb, to coincide with the Eastman School’s restoration and installation last summer of a one-of-a-kind Baroque organ in the court, where educators and curators also have reinstalled the gallery’s collection of Italian and Italianate Baroque art. “Luca Giordano is one of the masters of 17th-century Italian art,” says Grant Holcomb, gallery director. “Our altarpiece is a most fitting companion to the Eastman organ in its drama, scale, and religious context.”