Sleeping guards in Prospero Fontana’s “Resurrection of Christ” at the Accademia di San Luca

Say ye, His disciples came by night, and stole Him away while we slept

Gospel of Matthew 28:13.

Perhaps this is a mistaken reading, but I find the sleeping guards in Prospero Fontana's "Resurrection of Christ" (1563–1565), from the collection of the Accademia di San Luca in Rome, rather touching. For in essence they are all of us, the whole ceaselessly slumbering human race, while its destinies are being decided.

The risen Saviour hovers above the gaping tomb, and at the foot of the open stone sepulchre, instead of being blinded by divine light and the miracle that has come to pass, the mighty and yet so helpless guards sleep peacefully.

I very much like this treatment of a moment of the highest dramatic tension and supernatural illumination as simply unnoticed by its only witnesses, snoring peacefully beside the empty burial place of the old world.

And so you are asked: what were you doing when He rose? And you reply: we were asleep

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Playing Cards and Dice Found on 1281 Mongol Fleet Ship Wreck off Takashima Island

O'Keeffe's 1930 landscape, kept in a closet for forty years, to be offered at Christie's on 17 November

Archaeologist Miles Russell calls Verica a woman, but his arguments fail to convince

Brass combination lock from the Anne Francis, wrecked in 1583, raised off Wales and its code read by scanning