be laid over a sepulchre. Legend has it that Holbein used a body retrieved from the Rhine as a model for the work. "Whether this is true or not, there is no doubt of his attempt to be totally convincing." The painting is exhibited in the Kunstmuseum Basel. Commentary The panel has attracted fascination and praise since it was created. The Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky was captivated by the work. In 1867, his wife had to drag him away from the panel lest its grip on him induce an epileptic seizure. Dostoevsky saw in Holbein an impulse similar to one of his own main literary preoccupations: the pious desire to confront Christian faith with everything that negated it, in this case the laws of nature and the stark reality of death. In his 1869 novel The Idiot, the character Prince Myshkin, having viewed a copy of the painting in the home of Rogozhin, declares that it has the power to make the viewer lose his faith. The character of Ippolit Terentyev, an articulate exponent of atheism and nihilism who is himself near death, engages in a long philosophical discussion of the painting, claiming that it demonstrates the victory of 'blind nature' over everything, including even the most perfect and beautiful of beings. Literary theorist Julia Kristeva included a psychoanalysis of the painting in her book Black Sun: Depression and Melancholia. "Does Holbein forsake us, as Christ, for an instant, had imagined himself forsaken?," she asks. "Or does he, on the contrary, invite us to change the Christly tomb into a living tomb, to participate in the painted death and thus include it in our own life, in order to live with it and make it live?" The effect of the open eyes and mouth has been described by the art critic Michel Onfray as giving the impression that "the viewer sees Christ seeing: he might also perceive what death has in store, because he's staring at the heavens, while his soul is probably there already. No-one has taken the trouble to close his mouth and his eyes. Or else Holbein wants to tell us that, even in death, Christ still looks and speaks." Notes Sources Bätschmann, Oskar & Griener, Pascal. Hans Holbein. Reaktion Books, 1997. . Revised and expanded edition, London: Reaktion Books, 2014. . Meyers, Jeffrey. "Holbein and the Idiot," in Meyers, Jeffrey, Painting and the Novel. London: Manchester