…; sale, Balthasar Theodorus, Baron van Heemstra van Froma en Eibersburen (1809-78, Leiden and The Hague), The Hague (C. van Doorn), 16 February 1880 sqq., no. 2, as copy after Rubens, fl. 255, to Van der Kellen, for the Nederlandsch Museum voor Geschiedenis en Kunst, The Hague (inv. no. 4790);¹¹Copy RKD. transferred to the museum, 1885

Object number: SK-A-962-A

When transferred to the Rijksmuseum in 1885, this painting of the Crucifixion was believed to be a poor copy of the Flemish School and to be the reverse of the central compartment of a triptych. It was registered as one object together with the two wings, with a note that it (the reverse of the central compartment) was in the depot. The two wings, obverse and reverse (SK-A-962-B, SK-A-962-C), are executed by two different, earlier hands.

In 1976, the present work was described as a putative copy and dated as from the late seventeenth century. But as yet no prototype has been identified; and unusual iconographic features, described below, may make it seem unlikely that one ever existed. The quality of execution is poor, and thus the painting may be a genuine work by an Antwerp journeyman painter aware of the Rubens tradition and the style of Anthony van Dyck circa 1630, as the Virgin’s pose replicates that in Van Dyck’s altarpiece in Sint-Romboutskerk, Mechelen, of circa 1628-29.²²S.J. Barnes, N. de Poorter, O. Millar and H. Vey, Anthony van Dyck: A Complete Catalogue of the Paintings, New Haven/London 2004, no. III.22. The date of execution could be somewhat later, but at least from the mid-seventeenth century.

Unlike the Van Dyck altarpiece, the Virgin is here depicted with a sword in her chest, and thus as the Mother of Sorrows, a cult image still popular in Antwerp in the first half of the seventeenth century.³³J.B. Knipping, Iconography of the Counter Reformation in the Netherlands: Heaven on Earth, 2 vols., Nieuwkoop 1974 (ed. princ. Hilversum 1940), II, p. 276. One of her seven sorrows was the Crucifixion⁴⁴ Cf. Ysenbrandt’s picture in the Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekerk, Bruges (M.J. Friedländer, Early Netherlandish Painting, 14 vols., Leiden 1967-76, XI, 1974, fig. 138). and so her presence in this guise on the historical Calvary, as described by John (19:25-27), is peculiar and not to be compared with a similar depiction of her in the company of later saints at the foot of the cross by Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640).⁵⁵In a modello, present whereabouts unknown, but reproduced before cleaning and not accepted by Judson (in J.R. Judson, Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, VI: The Passion of Christ, London 2000, pp. 135-36, under no. 34); ex-the late Baron van Dedem, Richmond, London; but see J.S. Held, ‘New oil sketches by Peter Paul Rubens’, The Burlington Magazine 129 (1987), pp. 572-75, pp. 581-82, fig. 15.

An iconographic solecism is for St John to stand alone beneath the crucified Christ to his right (dexter). Traditionally this honoured position was occupied by the Virgin, with John on the left (sinister), as in Rubens’s studio picture in Musée du Louvre;⁶⁶ R. Oldenbourg, P.P. Rubens: Des Meisters Gemälde: in 538 Abbildungen (Klassiker der Kunst V), Stuttgart/Berlin 1921, p. 150; thought by Judson among others to be by Van Dyck, see J.R. Judson, Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, VI: The Passion of Christ, London 2000, p. 136 and no. 17. Rubens did sometimes vary the traditional disposition of the mourners on Calvary, but never in this way.

At the head of the cross is fixed the titulus as related by John (19:19), with the acronym of Pilate’s denunciation of Christ in Latin: INRI – Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum – Jesus of Nazareth the King of the Jews.

Gregory Martin, 2022

1976, p. 693, no. A 962a (as Southern Netherlands School, late seventeenth century)

G. Martin, 2022, 'anonymous, Christ on the Cross, with the Mother of Sorrows and Saints John the Evangelist and Mary Magdalene, Antwerp, c. 1630', in Flemish Paintings in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20027033