Details
Willem Key (Breda 1515/20-1568 Antwerp) and Studio
Christ Carrying the Cross
oil on panel
3838 x 2818 in. (97.4 x 71.4 cm.)
Provenance
Anonymous sale; Pierre Bergé et Associés, Brussels, 24 November 2010, lot 6, as 'Flemish School, 16th Century, Follower of Michiel Coxie'.
Special notice
This lot is offered without reserve.
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Lot Essay

A slightly larger, now untraced painting of this composition by Willem Key was formerly in the collection of the Kunsthalle, Hamburg, while another version may formerly have been in Besançon (see K. Jonckheere, Willem Key (1516-1568): Portrait of a Humanist Painter, Turnhout, 2011, pp. 162-163, no. A84, illustrated). The figure of the bearded thief in the upper left background derives from a similar figure in Michiel Coxie's Christ Carrying the Cross (El Escorial, San Lorenzo de El Escorial). Such closely cropped scenes of Christ carrying the cross were popular with a broad spectrum of painters at the middle of the sixteenth century, their immediacy enabling the viewer to more closely associate with Christ's Passion.
We are grateful to Peter van den Brink for endorsing the attribution on the basis of photographs.

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