Support The plain-weave canvas with an arched top has been wax-resin lined. All tacking edges have been removed. Judging by the different widths of the crack patterns parallel to the edges and by the fact that the picture plane is folded over the current stretcher at the bottom and on the left and right, the initial sight size of the painting must have been larger.
Preparatory layers The single, beige ground extends up to the current edges of the canvas. It consists of white and umber-coloured pigments.
Underdrawing No underdrawing could be detected with the naked eye or infrared photography.
Paint layers The paint extends up to the current edges of the canvas. The composition was built up from the back to the front. An undermodelling in brownish tones is visible in Christ’s left hand and in the mouth of the man on the far left. The clothing of the figures was painted wet in wet, blending the light and shaded areas together. The flesh tones, also applied wet in wet, were finished with warm glazes and cool scumbles. Deep red glazes were applied in Christ’s eye sockets, nose, mouth, stigmata, navel and in between the toes. A good deal of impasto is present in the highlights, especially in the flesh tones.
Michel van de Laar, 2008

Poor. There are discoloured retouchings and overpaints throughout. The varnish is uneven and has yellowed.

Commissioned by the priest Augustinus de Wolff for the Church of St Gummarus, Enkhuizen, 1633;¹¹W.H. de Boer, Sint Gommer en Sint Pancras: Klooster, kerk en klerus in Enkhuizen, Enkhuizen 1988, p. 25. purchased from Henricus Petrus Dievenbach (1834-1921), priest of the Church of Sts Gummarus and Pancratius,²²Note RMA. The priest’s name was wrongly given as H.J. Dierenbach in previous Rijksmuseum catalogues. by the museum, through the mediation of the dealer ‘M.S.’, Monnickendam, November 1907³³The painting is described in the catalogue for the sale, Amsterdam (F. Muller), 26 November 1907, no. 1370, so the Rijksmuseum probably bought it just before the auction. On its acquisition see also W.H. de Boer, Sint Gommer en Sint Pancras: Klooster, kerk en klerus in Enkhuizen, Enkhuizen 1988, p. 80.

Object number: SK-A-2311

The Rijksmuseum’s Descent from the Cross of 1633 is an important early example of Counter-Reformation history painting in the Dutch Republic.⁸⁸On which see X. van Eck, Clandestine Splendor: Paintings for the Catholic Church in the Dutch Republic, Zwolle 2008. It evokes associations with the two artists who had a major influence on Pieter de Grebber, particularly in his early years: Peter Paul Rubens and Rembrandt.⁹⁹H. Gerson, ‘Rembrandt en de schilderkunst in Haarlem’, in H. Miedema, R.W. Scheller and P.J.J. van Thiel (eds.), Miscellanea I.Q. van Regteren Altena 16.V.1969, Amsterdam 1969, pp. 138-42, esp. p. 139; P.C. Sutton, ‘Rembrandt and Pieter de Grebber’, in C.P. Schneider, W.W. Robinson and A.I. Davies (eds.), Shop Talk: Studies in Honor of Seymour Slive, Presented on his Seventy-Fifth Birthday, Cambridge 1995, pp. 241-44, esp. p. 245. The composition recalls that of several altarpieces by Rubens with this subject which De Grebber could have seen in Antwerp and Lille during his visit to Flanders in 1618.¹⁰¹⁰Antwerp, Cathedral of Our Lady (1611-14), and Lille, Palais des Beaux-Arts (1616-17); illustrated in J.R. Judson, Rubens: The Passion of Christ, London 2000, figs. 135, 166. Sutton even regarded it as an act of homage to Rubens’s Antwerp Descent,¹¹¹¹P.C. Sutton, ‘Rembrandt and Pieter de Grebber’, in C.P. Schneider, W.W. Robinson and A.I. Davies (eds.), Shop Talk: Studies in Honor of Seymour Slive, Presented on his Seventy-Fifth Birthday, Cambridge 1995, pp. 241-44, esp. p. 243. which De Grebber would have known not only at first hand but also from a reproductive print of 1620 by Lucas Vorsterman.¹²¹²F.W.H. Hollstein et al., Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts ca. 1450-1700, XLIII, Roosendaal 1993, p. 36, no. 31 (ill.).

There are also unmistakable Rembrandtesque elements such as the dramatic lighting, the warm palette, the figure type of the man in a turban (Joseph of Arimathea) and above all the eye-catching repoussoir figure in the foreground, which had been a favourite motif of Rembrandt’s since the late 1620s.¹³¹³See his Simeon in the Temple in the Hamburger Kunsthalle, which has been mentioned in this connection by X. van Eck, Clandestine Splendor: Paintings for the Catholic Church in the Dutch Republic, Zwolle 2008, p. 87, and Two Old Men Disputing in Melbourne, National Gallery of Victoria; illustrated in J. Bruyn et al., A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings, I, The Hague/Boston/London 1982, pp. 150, 160. Van Eck also recognized the influence of Anthony van Dyck and Jan Lievens in the figures of the Virgin and St John respectively.¹⁴¹⁴X. van Eck, Clandestine Splendor: Paintings for the Catholic Church in the Dutch Republic, Zwolle 2008, p. 87. See B. Schnackenburg, ‘Jan Lievens und Pieter de Grebber’, Wallraf-Richartz-Jahrbuch 68 (2007), pp. 181-218, for the role played by Lievens in De Grebber’s work. However, it has less in common with Rembrandt’s etched Descent from the Cross of the same year.¹⁵¹⁵RP-P-1961-924. Unlike Rembrandt’s, De Grebber’s rendering of the subject has obvious classicist features. For example, he depicted Christ’s body in a dignified, idealized way, without contorted limbs.¹⁶¹⁶The group of figures is compositionally related to a horizontal Entombment by De Grebber, panel, 97 x 139.5 cm; sale, Amsterdam (Sotheby's), 22 May 1989, no. 50 (ill.). The painting is executed in the artist’s distinctive broad manner.

This altarpiece was commissioned in 1633 by the parish priest Augustinus de Wolff for the Church of St Gummarus in the fishing town of Enkhuizen in North Holland.¹⁷¹⁷See W.H. de Boer, Sint Gommer en Sint Pancras: Klooster, kerk en klerus in Enkhuizen, Enkhuizen 1988 for this clandestine church, which was merged with the Church of St Pancratius in the eighteenth century. As was so often the case, De Grebber owed the commission to his social network:¹⁸¹⁸On this see X. van Eck, ‘Een kwijnend bisdom nieuw leven ingeblazen: Pieter de Grebber en het Haarlems kapittel’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 52 (2004), pp. 254-69, in particular. his sister Maria had married De Wolff’s brother Wouter in 1629.¹⁹¹⁹W.H. de Boer, Sint Gommer en Sint Pancras: Klooster, kerk en klerus in Enkhuizen, Enkhuizen 1988, p. 25. A portrait of Augustinus de Wolff (1585-1635) painted by Maria de Grebber is now in Utrecht, Museum Catharijneconvent; illustrated in J.A. Welu and P. Biesboer (eds.), Judith Leyster: A Dutch Master and her World, exh. cat. Haarlem (Frans Halsmuseum)/Worcester (Worcester Art Museum) 1993, p. 231. The church sold this painting and other treasures in 1907 to raise money for a new building.²⁰²⁰W.H. de Boer, Sint Gommer en Sint Pancras: Klooster, kerk en klerus in Enkhuizen, Enkhuizen 1988, p. 80.

Gerdien Wuestman, 2026

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

A. Bredius and H. Gerson, Rembrandt: The Complete Edition of Paintings, London 1969, p. 139; R. Schillemans, ‘Schilderijen in Noordnederlandse katholieke kerken uit de eerste helft van de zeventiende eeuw’, De Zeventiende Eeuw 8 (1992), pp. 41-52, esp. p. 47; P.C. Sutton, ‘Rembrandt and Pieter de Grebber’, in C.P. Schneider, W.W. Robinson and A.I. Davies (eds.), Shop Talk: Studies in Honor of Seymour Slive, Presented on his Seventy-Fifth Birthday, Cambridge 1995, pp. 241-44, esp. p. 243; X. van Eck, ‘The Artist’s Religion: Paintings Commissioned for Clandestine Catholic Churches in the Northern Netherlands, 1600-1800’, Simiolus 27 (1999), pp. 70-94, esp. p. 87, no. 2; X. van Eck, Clandestine Splendor: Paintings for the Catholic Church in the Dutch Republic, Zwolle 2008, p. 87

1908, p. 419, no. 1001b; 1976, p. 248, no. A 2311

Gerdien Wuestman, 2026, 'Pieter de Grebber, The Descent from the Cross, 1633', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/2004499