The Crucifixion

Set against darkening clouds, this striking panel presents Christ’s crucifixion on Golgotha, a view of Jerusalem in the distance. Christ’s cross is surrounded by holy mourners. At the left, the Virgin looks stoically up at her son, her hands clasped in prayer, with Saint John the Evangelist dressed in his traditional red robes clasping his hands in anguish behind her. Behind him, one of the Holy women, presumably either Mary Cleophas or Mary Salome, raises her yellow mantle to wipe her eyes. In the left foreground, another mourning woman is seated on the ground, her legs tucked beneath her body and the skirts of her dress arranged in a complex network of folds. This figure seems to be based directly on established Netherlandish models, deriving ultimately from the figure of Mary Magdalene in the Lamentation of Hugo van der Goes’ Fall and Redemption of Man diptych, now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna (after 1479). Isolated on the other side of the cross, the Magdalene kneels at its foot, her arms extended, her eyes raised to the body of Christ hanging above her. Her placement in this position here had assumed a great significance from the late Middle Ages onwards, used to demonstrate the saint’s profound compassion for the suffering of Christ and to inspire viewers to follow her example. In the background of the scene, further figures are shown. At the left, mounted centurions watch the mourners from a distance. One, carrying a lance, is likely Longinus, responsible for making the wound that is visible on Christ’s side. Beyond the three crosses, further down the slopes of Calvary at the right of the panel, guards roll dice to win Christ’s robe. Somewhat unusually, above Christ’s cross, the artist has included God the Father and the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove descending from Heaven wreathed in divine light.

The treatment of the figure of God the Father here appears to rely on a knowledge of Italian models, evoking, for example, Michelangelo’s God diving the land and water from the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel (1508-12). Indeed, the painter seems evidently to have been aware of contemporary, or near contemporary, painting in the Italian peninsula, with the contorted body of the Bad Thief (on the right of the panel), for example, seeming to have been inspired by Venetian models by painters like Tintoretto, albeit filtered perhaps through the work of Netherlandish painters like Marten de Vos. While the identity of the artist of the panel remains elusive, the features of the figures, sweeping landscape and tonality of the work, recalls the work of artists like Gillis Mostaert (1528-1598), indicating that the picture was probably made in Antwerp during the second half of the sixteenth century. Infrared reflectographs of the panel show a relatively extensive scheme of underdrawing across the composition, with different levels of precision used in different areas of the design. The drawing in the larger figures, like the Magdalene, the Virgin and God the Father, displays a more comprehensive system of hatching and modelling of form. The more diminutive figures, like the mounted centurions and particularly the group of gambling soldiers at the right, however, are indicated with more expressive, summary lines, suggesting they were added more rapidly and freely during the planning of the composition.