The Deposition

The beautiful, lifeless body of Christ lies gently on a sheet of light blue tones, surrounded by four figures gazing at him. His wounds suggest that his stooped posture and half-closed eyes do not indicate that he is asleep, but that he has passed away. The cold tones alternate with the bright crimson, metallic black and violet of his attire. The nails and the cross place us on Golgotha, outside the walls of Jerusalem. Its considerable size and remarkable state of preservation, as well as the fact that it comes from the prestigious collection of Cardinal Joseph Fesch (as evidenced by the seal on the reverse, Fig. 1), reaffirm what the style and quality of the painting had already shown us.

The craftsmanship in the depiction of the tears running down the faces of Mary and St. John is deliberately related to the archaic tradition of the Flemish Primitives, as are the precious materials in the dress of the wealthy Joseph of Arimathea on the right, draped in a cloak of brocaded furs. Brown-haired Nicodemus, with his coiled turban, holds the nails of the cross in his hand, as he contemplates the wounds in Christ’s forehead. The dramatic atmosphere is made vibrant by these compositional and chromatic devices, as demanded by devotio moderna, a particular form of private worship that had become increasingly popular in Flanders in the 16th century and required works of art for private meditation.

Authors such as the Master of the Prodigal Son were able to respond to the great demand for artworks suitable for this type of worship. It is likely that our work was conceived to ornament a private chapel. In this sense, it is necessary to go deeper into the subject.

The work, which dates from the author’s youth, between 1535 and 1540, reveals the profound influence of Pieter Coecke in the choice of the cut of the composition and the placement of the foreshortened characters, almost as if they were in a natural setting with a broad landscape as a backdrop. The panel was probably part of a triptych. Its exterior panels must have been removed for commercial reasons before the 20th century. This undoubtedly confirms the widespread use of religious triptychs with the same theme, from the most common to the most singular. Moreover, only one other version of our work (of inferior quality) is known and is currently attributed to the workshop of Pieter Coeckhop (Fig. 2). It is identical to ours in the number of characters and general features, but differs in the choice of colors, details, authorship and landscape retouching.

Therefore, it seems logical to assume that the Master may have seen this triptych in Antwerp, and then translated the scheme into his own style to create a specific and genuine work, very different from works datable to the 1550s that are sometimes quite repetitive (Figs. 3 and 4).

If we also compare the aforementioned triptych with the one currently preserved in the Wallraf Richartz Museum (Fig. 5) and with the corresponding one from a private collection (Fig. 9, Comparisons), the original appearance of our table can be appreciated. The central scene culminates with Mary Magdalene, on the right panel, and an elderly saint, on the left, turning towards the main scene, transmitting a continuity that is also confirmed by the landscape in the background, which is always conceived in a unitary way from one side of the triptych to the other.

Many other similar cases support our reconstruction with an evocative hypothesis. Two side panels of a triptych, the central part of which is unknown, are preserved in the collections of the Pushkin Museum. The two panels became part of the Russian royal collections after 1854. After that, the panels changed ownership several times. During one of these sales, the panels were transferred on canvas, following a custom typical of Russian restorers. It was probably modified by cutting off the upper part in a circular shape, so that they were more independent of the missing central part.

Its current height is 88 centimeters, but it could have easily reached 111 centimeters like our painting, if it had not been cut. In addition, the style of the two panels are strongly related to our work, both sharing a monumental style. The chiaroscuro of the faces, the light coming from the same direction (with an identical play of shadows on the body of Christ and the figure of Mary Magdalene), the plasticity of the flesh and the large hands, the identical representation of the precious details reveal an obvious stylistic link. Not to mention that, according to our reconstruction, our painting would be a more than plausible variation of the aforementioned triptych (Fig. 8). In support of our theory, note the background landscape that extends across the three panels, both in terms of color palette and in terms of coloring and architectural structures. The city, with its walls, extends from the center to the left panel, behind the bearded old man, while on the opposite side the mountains give way to the trees from right to left behind Mary Magdalene.

This hypothesis will have to be definitively proven by the technical analysis of the two panels. However, the great overall quality of the three panels is undoubtedly enhanced by their juxtaposition and allows us to affirm this work as an anthology of the Master of the Prodigal Son.

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Pictures of comparative artworks: