Three men and a woman after the 'Borghese Entombment'

A photograph of a drawing now in the Louvre, Paris (inv. no. 3967), where it is attributed to the so-called 'Calligraphic Forger', a seventeenth (?) century copyist of Raphael.  

This drawing is closely related to two drawings by Raphael for the 'Borghese Entombment', a painting executed by Raphael (1507) now in the Galleria Borghese, Rome (inv.no. 170). The two drawings are now in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford and in the British Museum (see RCINs 850246 and 850254 for photographs of these drawings).

The so-called 'Borghese Entombment' used to be the central panel of an altarpiece ('Baglioni Altarpiece') executed by Raphael for the church of San Francesco al Prato in Perugia and commissioned by Atalanta Baglioni to commemorate the death of her son Grifonetto, who was murdered in 1500. Raphael is documented in Perugia in 1505, when scholars believe that Raphael received the commission, and the majority of his preparatory drawings are dated c.1506-1507.

A considerable number of sketches and studies by Raphael for this composition are known and they reflect the different phases towards the definition of the pictorial programme. The scene depicted in the painting is the moment in which Christ's body is carried to the grave, with the separate group of the three Marys supporting the Virgin to the right. The more conventional iconographies of the Entombment and the Lamentation over Christ's body have here been transformed by Raphael into a more narrative painting.

By order of the nephew of Pope Paul V, Scipione Borghese, in 1608 the painting was removed from its original location and housed in the Borghese collection in Rome, where it remained until 1797 when it was confiscated by Napoleon and taken to Paris. In 1815 it was returned to the Galleria Borghese.