The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb by the work. In 1867, his wife had to drag him away from the panel lest its grip on him induce an epileptic fit. 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
Prince Myshkin opportunity to "defend himself triumphantly". Instead the Prince humbly tries to make peace with the young men and calmly absorbs their insults and provocations, even sympathising with them and offering assistance. In the dinner party scene at the Epanchins' house in Part IV of the novel, Myshkin delivers a passionate denunciation of Catholicism, describing it as an unchristian religion because it has been dominated by the desire for political supremacy. He is thus denouncing "the very confusion of the temporal and the spiritual that, on the personal level, Aglaya wishes him to incarnate." As with the other characters, Myshkin's persistently