The Descent from the Cross

The present composition is closely based on Rogier van der Weyden’s Descent from the Cross of circa 1435 (Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado). In contrast to the restricted space of the golden case that frames van der Weyden’s figures, here Coffermans transfers the scene to a more traditional landscape setting, grounding the subject more firmly in the narrative moment when Christ’s body is taken down from the Cross. The majority of the figures follow van der Weyden’s prototype, though Coffermans excludes, for example, the dynamically slumping Magdalene from the left of the composition, replacing her with a more conventional, veiled mourning woman and shifting the focus more toward the swooning Virgin. The pose of Mary and Christ are echoed between one another, alluding to the popular belief during the Middle Ages that the Virgin suffered, in compassion with her Son, the pains of Christ’s tortures on the Cross.

Marcellus Coffermans worked in Antwerp during the mid-sixteenth century, becoming a master painter there in 1549, when he registered as such with the painter’s Guild of Saint Luke. Much of the artist’s oeuvre relied on the compositions of his predecessors and used and reworked established compositions by fifteenth and early sixteenth century Netherlandish painters. His works gained popularity in Spain, where many of them survive, and he likely maintained a large workshop in order to meet these export demands. While nothing of the early provenance of the present painting is known, the presence of Rogier van der Weyden’s Descent in Spain from the late 1550s may suggest that Coffermans’ version was made for an Iberian patron, who had seen the great work.

Numerous copies were made of Rogier van der Weyden’s great Descent during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Originally painted for the altar of the Guild of Crossbowmen in the Chapel of Our Lady Without the Walls at Leuven, Rogier’s painting was replaced by a copy there in 1548, made by Michiel Coxcie, and the original taken into the collection of Mary of Hungary, sister of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor. Installed in her residence at Binche, in the Flemish province of Hainault, it was seen by the Spanish courtier Vicente Alvárez, who deemed it ‘the best picture in the whole castle and even…in the whole world’ (D. de Vos, Rogier van der Weyden: The Complete Works, New York, 1999, pp. 185-6). After Mary’s death in 1558, the painting was inherited by her nephew Philip II of Spain and taken to Madrid. The painting’s significance in the Netherlands is testified to by the number of copies surviving of the work, including those made by leading painters like Joos van Cleve (Philadelphia, Museum of Art), several versions by Coxcie (Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado; El Escorial, Monasterio de San Lorenzo; and Berlin, Bode-Museum) and an engraving by Cornelis Cort that was published by Hieronymous Cock. The use of the landscape background in the present painting suggests Coffermans was working from a copy of the work, whether drawn or painted, rather from the picture itself. Indeed, van Cleve’s version, painted in circa 1518-1520, likewise includes a landscape setting.