The Descent from the Cross is the central panel of a triptych painting by the Baroque artist Peter Paul Rubens in 1612–1614. It is still in its original place, the Cathedral of Our Lady, Antwerp, Belgium. The painting is considered to be one of Rubens' masterpieces. The painting depicts the moment when the body of Jesus Christ is taken down from the cross after his crucifixion. The subject was one Rubens returned to again and again in his career. The artwork was commissioned on September 7, 1611, by the Confraternity of the Arquebusiers, whose patron saint was St. Christopher.
Created in 1610 during the 1600-1650 period, this work belongs firmly within the portrait tradition. Peter Paul Rubens worked at a moment when the rivalry between Catholic Baroque drama and Protestant restraint reshaped what a painting could mean. Every gesture, fabric, and gleam of light was decoded by contemporary viewers like a private language.
Executed in Oil on panel, measuring 114.5 × 91.5 cm (45 1/8 × 36 in.); Framed: 137.8 × 115.6 × 12.7 cm (54 1/4 × 45 1/2 × 5 in.), the surface rewards close looking. Peter Paul Rubens builds the composition through layered glazes and a tightly controlled palette, letting cool shadows recede so that the warm, lit passages step forward. The brushwork shifts from the precise to the almost dissolved — a hallmark of mature Baroque practice.
“A silence so complete it becomes its own witness.”
What the painting depicts
Jesus Christ, man, Descent from the Cross.
From the museum
Peter Paul Rubens’s distinctive blend of fleshy figures and heroic actions dominated the artistic ethos of Antwerp (in present-day Belgium) for much of the 1600s. Here, he translated a sacred subject into vernacular language. The infant Jesus cuddles on the lap of his mother, Mary, whose exposed breast serves as a visual reminder of the human needs of Jesus, also the child of God. Her elderly cousin Elizabeth and Elizabeth’s son, John the Baptist, look on in wonder and awe, and Joseph, Mary’s husband, tends to a lamb, a symbol of Jesus’s eventual self-sacrifice. Notably, not one of these figures bears a halo, and they are all wearing contemporary dress. Furthermore, not one engages with the viewer; rather, they participate in a series of interlocked gazes that ultimately lead back to Mary. Rubens energized the European art market with his robust and monumental forms, inspired by those of Michelangelo and Raphael that he had seen in Italy. A consummate businessman, Rubens not only directed assistants to paint multiple variants of this composition, but he also commissioned engravings after it. It was an early success for the young, ambitious painter, who achieved a harmonious blend of emotional tenderness and moral strength within each figure.
Jacques Langlier, Paris, who acquired it in three pieces and had it conserved by the successors to Godefroid before selling it to Antoine Poullain for 24,000 fr [annotation in the copy of the Poullain sale in the Philadelphia Museum of Art; information on this and related annotations in other copies of this sale catalogue were kindly supplied by Burton Fredericksen, email of December 13, 2013 in curatorial file; it was presumably when the three vertical boards were reassembled that a narrow horizontal board was added across the top of the panel]; Antoine Poullain, Paris; sold J. B. P. Lebrun, Paris, March 15, 1780, lot 22 for 11,000 fr. to Orsay [according to annotated catalogue cited above and catalogue of the Orsay sale]; Comte d’Orsay, Paris, sold Basan, Paris, 14 April 1790, lot 65 [see also Rooses, 1886, p. 301]. The painting was taken to England but remained unsold and was returned to Paris [according to Smith 1830, p. 246, under no. 837]. Nicolas Lerouge; Paris, offered for sale January 16, 1816, lot 19, but bought in [according to annotated sale cat. at the Johnson Collection, Philadelphia Museum of Art (the name Castalan or Catalan is also mentioned as the consigner, see Rooses 1886, p. 301)]; Chevalier Sebastian Erard; his estate sale, Château de la Muette, August 7, 1832, lot no. 126, for 6,020 fr. to Hope [according to catalogue of Hope sale]; William Williams Hope, Rushton Hall, Northamptonshire; sold, Hôtel des Commissaries-Priseurs, Paris, May 11, 1858, lot no. 7 for 4200 fr. [annotated catalogue at the Frick Art Reference Library]. M. Thirion, Paris; sold Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, June 10, 1907, lot 17 for 59,000 fr. to de Jonghe [according to letter of May 2, 1967 from Julius Weitzner to Charles Cunningham in curatorial file, Paris; the painting has frequently been confused with the larger version on canvas formerly in the Marlborough and Butler collections, Rooses no. 227)]; S. de Jonghe, Paris (died c. 1943), who sent it to George Blumenthal in New York in 1938 [according to Weitzner letter cited above, noting that Blumenthal was de Jonghe’s partner at Lazard Frères]; transferred on de Jonghe’s death to Alavoine and Company for sale [letter of Julius Weitzner cited above]; sold to Julius H. Weitzner, London and New York by 1946 [he lent it to Los Angeles 1946]; given to his daughter Marjorie Weitzner Gambino, Rome, and sold on her behalf to the Art Institute, 1967.
Where to see The Holy Family with Saints Elizabeth and John the Baptist
