…; collection Jacques Meyers (?-1721), Rotterdam;¹¹Meyers probably acquired the picture after 1714 as it is not in his catalogue of that year. Judson (J.R. Judson, Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, VI: The Passion of Christ, London 2000, under no. 19C) suggested that the painting may be identified with no. 171 of the inventory of pictures owned by Arnold Lunden (1595-1656), Antwerp, drawn up in 1639-49, published by H. Vlieghe, ‘Une grande collection anversoise du Dix-Septième Siècle: Le cabinet d’Arnold Lunden, beau-frère de Rubens’, Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen 19 (1977), pp. 172-204, esp. p. 200: ‘Un portement de Croix par le meme [i.e. Rubens]’. There is no means of knowing either way, but significantly the work is not described there as a sketch. There is an unidentified seal in black wax on the reverse showing six dots on a shield. his sale, Rotterdam (auction house not known), 9 September 1722, no. 76 (‘Christus, dragende zyn Kruis naer den Berg Kalvarien, door P.P. Rubbens, h. 2 v. 3 en een halven d. br. 1 v. 9 en een halven d. [74.5 x 55 cm]’), fl. 155, to Hendrik van Heteren (1672-1749), The Hague;²²G. Hoet, Catalogus of Naamlyst van Schilderyen, met derzelver Pryzen Zedert een langen reeks van Jaaren zoo in Holland als op andere Plaatzen in het openbaar verkogt. Benevens een Verzamelingvan Lysten van Verscheyden nog in wezen zynde Cabinetten, 3 vols., The Hague 1752-70, I, p. 273. his son, Adriaan Leonard van Heteren (1724-1800), The Hague, (‘Een stuk verbeeldende Christus, dragende het Kruis na den berg van Calvarien, zeer vol beelden, door Petrus Paulus Rubens, h. 28 en een half d., br. 21 en een half d. [74.5 x 56.2 cm] P.’);³³‘Catalogus van Schilderyen, In’t Kabinet van den Heer Bewindhebber, Adriaen Leonard van Heteren in’s Hage’, in G. Hoet, Catalogus of Naamlyst van Schilderyen, met derzelver Pryzen Zedert een langen reeks van Jaaren zoo in Holland als op andere Plaatzen in het openbaar verkogt. Benevens een Verzameling van Lysten van Verscheyden nog in wezen zynde Cabinetten, 3 vols., The Hague 1752-70, II, p. 458. his third cousin and godson, Adriaan Leonard van Heteren Gevers (1794-1866), Rotterdam, (‘Pierre Paul Rubbens. Superbe ébauche, représentant Jésus succombant sous le fardeau de la Croix en allant au Mont Calvaire. Le grand tableau peint d’après cette ébauche se trouvait autrefois dans L’Église de l’Abaye de Afflingen de l’Ordre des Benedictins à quatre lieues de Bruxelles du coté de Gand, bois, h. 28½ b. 21½ [74.5 x 56.2 cm]’);⁴⁴‘Catalogue Raisonné d’une Collection de Tableaux appartenant à Monsieur A.L. Gevers, Page de Leurs Majestés le Roi et la Reine de Hollande’, s.l. 1808, transcribed in E.W. Moes and E. van Biema, De Nationale Konst-Gallery en Het Koninklijk Museum, Amsterdam 1909, pp. 145-51, esp. p. 149, no. 98. from whom, fl. 100,000, with 136 other paintings en bloc (known as the ‘Kabinet van Heteren Gevers’), to the museum, by decree of Lodewijk Napoleon, King of Holland, and through the mediation of his father Dirk Cornelis Gevers (1763-1839), 8 June 1809;⁵⁵T.L.J. Verroen, ‘‘Een verstandig ryk Man’: de achttiende-eeuwse verzamelaar Adriaan Leonard Van Heteren’, in C. Scheffer (ed.) et al., Achttiende-eeuwse kunst in de Nederlanden, Leids Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 4 (1985), pp. 17-61, esp. p. 17, notes 2, 3. on loan to the Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht, 2004-11

Object number: SK-A-344

The museum sketch – on a composite support of two pieces of oak timber from the Polish/Baltic area and available for use from 1627 – has been accepted as the work of Peter Paul Rubens executed in preparation for the high altarpiece of the church of Sint-Peter en Pauluskerk in the prestigious Benedictine abbey at Afflighem in southern Brabant.⁶⁶J.S. Held, The Oil Sketches of Peter Paul Rubens: A Critical Catalogue, 2 vols., Princeton 1980, nos. 344-48, pp. 472-74; J.R. Judson, Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, VI: The Passion of Christ, London 2000, no. 19 for the commission and 19c for the present picture; J. Vander Auwera et al., Rubens: A Genius at Work, exh. cat. Brussels (Koninklijke Musea voor Schone Kunsten van België) 2007-08, no. 68; Judson, who provides a full bibliography, cryptically states that the Amsterdam sketch ‘is not simply an elaboration of Rubens’s first idea …’ in J.R. Judson, Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, VI: The Passion of Christ, London 2000, under no. 19C. Rubens was in discussion about the commission in 1634 and the altarpiece was delivered in 1637; it is now in the Koninklijke Musea voor Schone Kunsten van België, Brussels. Reservations about the authenticity of the Amsterdam sketch (early harboured by the present author) were first aired in 2007, when the catalogue of Rubens: A Genius at Work attributed it to Rubens and studio; the entry by Peeters and Dubois proposed that studio participation was confined to ‘the figures in the background’, and that the assistant ‘was perhaps assigned the task of finishing the sketch begun by the master’.⁷⁷J. Vander Auwera et al., Rubens: A Genius at Work, exh. cat. Brussels (Koninklijke Musea voor Schone Kunsten van België) 2007-08, no. 69.

In the present work there is a difference in degree of finish between the troop of horsemen at the head of the procession and the group of the two thieves and their escorts at the rear (in the foreground). But it seems likely that only one hand was responsible for the work; and it is here contended that being largely no more than facile in his handling of the brush, the artist should not be identified as Rubens. Clearly he was familiar with Rubens’s work, but he could endow the principal figures with facial expressions little more than feeble and was clumsy at rendering muscles (e.g. the back of the man supporting the cross). Further his control of the formal configuration of the composition was so weak that he could only include the arm of the bad thief’s escort.

Two other sketches also associated with Rubens’s preparation for the commission, in the Vienna Akademie⁸⁸J. Vander Auwera et al., Rubens: A Genius at Work, exh. cat. Brussels (Koninklijke Musea voor Schone Kunsten van België) 2007-08, no. 73; and also J.R. Judson, Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, VI: The Passion of Christ, London 2000, no. 17, for a fuller discussion. and the Brussels museum⁹⁹J. Vander Auwera et al., Rubens: A Genius at Work, exh. cat. Brussels (Koninklijke Musea voor Schone Kunsten van België) 2007-08, no. 74., are no longer considered autograph. Although very different in style, it seems possible that they were also the work of studio hands as they followed Rubens’s drafting sessions.

Only one extant modello for the altarpiece, a large-scale sketch in the Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen (inv. no. 1856), is generally agreed to be autograph, as can in part be inferred from technical photographs. This is rapidly drawn and brushed mostly in grisaille in at least two phases.¹⁰¹⁰J. Verhave and J. Wadum, ‘Pä sposet af den kreative process Peter Paul Rubens: Kristus pä vejen til Golgata. Korsboeringen’, SMK Art Journal 2007 (2008), pp. 4-15 (translated: ‘Following the Creative Process – Peter Paul Rubens: The Ascent to Calvary. The Bearing of the Cross’, pp. 86-95). In marked contrast to the present painting is the extensive use of underdrawing in black chalk. In many respects, as Verhave and Wadum have shown, in its first phase (before the introduction of the mounted commander), the design of the Copenhagen modello was the same or very similar to that in the Rijksmuseum work. This latter is best understood as partially independent, but chiefly inspired by Rubens as he worked on the Afflighem commission. The altarpiece was installed on 8 April 1637; it may have been available along with the preparatory work, for some time in the studio.

The main source of inspiration for the author of the Rijksmuseum painting, most likely an advanced pupil or assistant in the studio, was the composition as first drafted by Rubens in the Copenhagen sketch; he seems to have had access also to other preparatory work as well as knowledge of the altarpiece itself. The attitude of St Veronica, in which Held found much to praise,¹¹¹¹J.S. Held, The Oil Sketches of Peter Paul Rubens: A Critical Catalogue, 2 vols., Princeton 1980, p. 478 under no. 347. is to a degree independent of Rubens, but the gesture of wiping Christ’s forehead was inspired by the motif devised in the Copenhagen sketch. From this work is also derived the pose of the child behind Veronica, although the artist’s first idea (as more outstretched) follows that in the prototype of the Vienna sketch. For the configuration of St John supporting the Virgin, the source seems to have been first the arrangement as recorded in the Brussels sketch (with the saint’s arm over the Virgin’s), and then the solution finally arrived at in the altarpiece itself. The soldier restraining the Virgin is a motif derived from that set out in the Vienna sketch. The probable pentiment in the bottom left of the Rijksmuseum picture suggests that the first idea was inspired by either of the formulations preserved in the Brussels or Vienna sketches and showed the group of guards and prisoners moving towards the right (the white cloth binding the bad thief’s arms behind his back is still visible, as is in black and white photographs the image of the soldier pushing the thief along from behind). Then Rubens’s proposal in the Copenhagen modello was selected and the group was switched round. But by placing the foremost Roman soldier (whose left arm, staff and leg are clearly afterthoughts) too near the centre, the artist left insufficient room to show the whole group and was only able to include the left arm of the soldier escorting the bad thief.

With its echoes of Raphael’s Spasimo di Sicilia of 1515¹²¹²L. Dussler, Raffael: Kritisches Verzeichnis der Gemälde, Wandbilder und Bildteppiche, Munich 1966, p. 44, pl. 96. in the gesture of the Virgin, in the mounted, Roman ensign and to a lesser extent in the mounted commander, Rubens’s rising, in-depth design is highly original, as is the prominent foreground placement of the thieves at the rear of the procession. An ambiguous and thus controversial sentence in Phalesius’s chronicle of the Afflighem monastery of 1637, in which the history of the commission is briefly mentioned,¹³¹³Hubertus Phalesius, Monasterii SS Petri et Pauli Affligensis … Chronicon, 1637; excerpts from the second edition printed by U. Heinen, ‘“Meliora forma”. Quellenstudien zum Auftrag für Rubens’ Affligemer Kreuztragung’, Jaarboek van het Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten Antwerpen (1993), pp. 135-63, esp. appendix II, pp. 161-62. has been interpreted by some scholars to mean that Rubens was asked (in October 1634) to alter his first proposal for the altarpiece;¹⁴¹⁴J. Vander Auwera et al., Rubens: A Genius at Work, exh. cat. Brussels (Koninklijke Musea voor Schone Kunsten van België) 2007-08, p. 205 under no. 68, summarizes the differing interpretations. the Rijksmuseum sketch has been identified with this supposed first proposal,¹⁵¹⁵Last advocated by J.R. Judson, Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, VI: The Passion of Christ, London 2000, p. 83 under no. 19, and then by Wieseman in P. Sutton et al., Drawn by the Brush: Oil Sketches by Peter Paul Rubens, exh. cat. Greenwich (Conn.) (Bruce Museum of Arts and Sciences)/Cincinnati (Cincinnati Art Museum)/Berkeley (Berkeley Art Museum) 2004-05, under no. 29; J. Verhave and J. Wadum, ‘Pä sposet af den kreative process Peter Paul Rubens: Kristus pä vejen til Golgata. Korsboeringen’, SMK Art Journal 2007 (2008), pp. 4-15 (translated: ‘Following the Creative Process – Peter Paul Rubens: The Ascent to Calvary. The Bearing of the Cross’, pp. 86-95), p. 89 as ‘generally (so) believed’. but such a thesis would no longer be sustainable if our contention concerning its status is correct.

Phalesius gave the altarpiece’s subject (using the genitive) ‘Christi Domini Baiulantis crucem’ (Christ the Lord carrying the Cross) and (in the accusative) ‘Christum Staurophorum Cruci succumbentem’ (The cross-bearing Christ falling under the cross). Following tradition,¹⁶¹⁶L. Réau, Iconographie de l’art chrétien, 3 vols., Paris 1955-59, II (2), pp. 463-66. Rubens relies chiefly on the account given in Luke 23:26-27 and 32, which not only describes how Simon of Cyrene took up the cross behind Christ, but accounts for the presence of the ‘Daughters of Jerusalem’ and the ‘two other, malefactors led with him to be put to death’. But the main emphasis is placed on the legendary St Veronica, who is wiping blood from Christ’s brow with her veil or with what is sometimes described as the Holy Handkerchief.

Gregory Martin, 2022

J.R. Judson, Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, VI: The Passion of Christ, London 2000, no. 19C (as by Rubens)

1809, p. 61, no. 264; 1841, p. 45, no. 270; 1843, p. 52, no. 269 (sound); 1853, p. 24, no. 240 [fl.12,000]; 1858, p. 119, no. 266; 1864, p. 128, no. 275; 1880, p. 414, no. 483; 1885, p. 72, no. 483; 1887, p. 144, no. 1221; 1903, p. 230, no. 2065; 1934, p. 249, no. 2065; 1960, p. 269, no. 2065; 1976, p. 483, no. A 344

G. Martin, 2022, 'workshop of Peter Paul Rubens, Christ on the Way to Calvary, c. 1635', in Flemish Paintings in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20026224