The Dead Christ and the Angels was exhibited at the Salon of 1864 along with Incident in a Bullfight, which Manet later cut down to produce The Dead Toreador . These are the only two paintings on the subject of violent death Manet made prior to the Execution of Maximilian series. They were both completed during the period of the French intervention in Mexico and may contain veiled allusions to it. It is known that Manet began The Dead Christ and the Angels no sooner than November 1863, one month after Napoleon III began his campaign to place Maximilian on the Mexican throne.

This painting refers to a Biblical story in which Mary Magdalen, having been told that the body of the crucified Christ is missing, looks into his tomb and sees two angels sitting where His body once lay. She then turns to see the resurrected Christ standing behind her. Contrary to this narrative, Manet chose to portray Christ inside the tomb and in a liminal state between death and life, much as he pictured Maximilian calm and motionless in the final instant before he fell to the ground. In fact, newspaper reports of Maximilian’s death claimed that he likened the sacrifice of his own life to that of Christ.