Housed at Museo de la Trinidad between 1865 and 1872. Transferred to the main Prado collection at Museo del Prado from 1872 to 1896. Moved to Museo de Arte Moderno in 1896, where it stayed until the 1970s. Returned permanently to the Museo del Prado in 1971, where it is occasionally brought out for temporary exhibitions.
The Descent from the Cross (El Descendimiento) by the famous representative of the Murcian school, Domingo Valdivieso y Henarejos (1830-1872), is a magnificent monument of the 19th-century Spanish academic religious painting. The artwork was created in the period of the highest artistic productivity of the Isabeline romantic-academic period. The scene is a very solemn one described in the Gospel of Mark (15:42-47) in which the body of Jesus Christ is taken down from the cross at dusk by his devoted followers and his mournful family. Valdivieso is working with this iconic imagery in a very narrative way and compresses space. The body of Christ is laid out with great care and wrapped in a clean linen shroud.
It is interesting to note in this work that it was accomplished with the assistance of the artist's particular friend, the legendary historical master painter Eduardo Rosales, who was the live anatomical model of Christ here. The multi-figural composition is called Around the Savior, where the figure of Joseph of Arimathea holds up the cross with Nicodemus and John the Apostle, while the sorrowful holy women (including Mary Magdalene and the Virgin Mary) stand around. Valdivieso's staging groups are close-knit and sculptural, not bound by idealized Baroque formulas, and more faithful to tactile realism, in which raw human emotions and mental reflections emerge.
The Diputación de Murcia's support for Valdivieso's pensioned studies in Rome and Paris shows a deep stylistic evolution in his career. In Italy, he learned the purity of the Nazarene movement and the masters of the Renaissance perspective face to face. Everything is linear, controlled, theatrical, and precise in its texture; the thick folds of the clothes, the chilling flesh colors of the Savior, and the sacred vessels filled with ointments, placed in the foreground, all illustrate this synthesis.
The horizon of the work is slightly extended to include the end of a dramatic evening, while a dark and moody chiaroscuro effect is over the hill of Golgotha. Valdivieso exhibited this canvas at the renowned National Exhibition of Fine Arts, where the academic standard and the depth of treatment of human suffering won him considerable critical praise and a prize medal in 1864.
The painting deliberately pulls away from the flashy, chaotic brushwork of the late Baroque era. Instead, Valdivieso channels the Purismo of the Nazarene movement—a group of artists who sought to revive the spiritual honesty and clean draftsmanship of early Renaissance painters like Raphael. Every face is a portrait of psychological depth: Mary Magdalene's frantic sorrow, John's steady devotion, and the Virgin Mary's quiet, internal breaking. It avoids melodramatic, theatrical hysterics, opting instead for a heavy, devastating intimacy.
