Peter Paul Rubens, Descent from the Cross

0:00:06.5 Dr. Steven Zucker: We’re in the Cathedral of Our Lady in Antwerp, looking at a massive triptych, a three-paneled painting that is in it’s original context. The church itself has become a kind of museum holding numerous paintings, including Rubens’s Elevation of the Cross. A commission undertaken just prior to this one.

0:00:26.7 Dr. Bert Watteeuw: In a sense, you could say that with the Elevation of the Cross, Rubens was trying to establish his name. He was doing everything with a lot of bravura, trying to demonstrate to his patrons what he’d learned in Italy and doing it all at once in a very limited space. Strong contrast, light and dark, harsh colors, harsh outlines. But as he becomes the main artist of his period in Antwerp, he doesn’t need to prove himself as much as he did. He saw the hard edges become a bit softer, and he takes his time to get to the emotional depth of the stories he’s depicting, rather than trying to impress viewers with visual fireworks.

0:01:06.5 Dr. Zucker: The Descent from the Cross depicts just that. Christ’s body is being lowered as gently as possible into this shroud.

0:01:14.2 Dr. Watteeuw: You can sense the limpness of this body and its weight. What I particularly like is the man on top who is clenching the sheet holding Christ’s corpse between his teeth so he can liberate his arm to hold up Christ’s arm. So there’s such respect for Christ’s body, with such tenderness in holding up his feet, in supporting him and carrying him. And all the attention is drawn to the center of the image in contrast to the Elevation of the Cross where the action is spread out over the central panel and the two wings. Rubens organizes a focus here on the core of the event, Christ’s body being lowered from the cross.

0:01:51.5 Dr. Zucker: If we spend just a moment with that man in the upper right corner whose elbow juts back, his head is below his shoulders, and you can see the blood in his cheeks, in his forehead. There is this incredible anatomical detail and sensitivity, but he’s looking downward. His arm is stretching downward towards Christ’s face.

0:02:12.3 Dr. Watteeuw: Rubens cuts to this moment in time and slows down the action. In the Elevation, he speeds things up and everything is moving. And here you step into this mass. You can’t move at the same pace you did before. You’re there with Christ, Mary, Saint John, and the people who are trying to lower this body.

0:02:32.2 Dr. Zucker: The strong diagonal that we saw in the Elevation of the Cross has now become a series of almost lilting turns. There’s the arc of Christ’s left arm, which is echoed by the sheet. There’s the arc of Christ’s torso, which is emphasized by his bent leg, but then the marvelous arc of the arms and the shoulders of Saint John. And those arcs are continued down as we get to Mary Magdalene. And then finally, if you look at the lower right arm, wrist, and hand of Mary Cleophas, and we see yet another arc, and so it’s a series of these little cusps that bring our eye down, slow our eye down.

0:03:09.9 Dr. Watteeuw: I really liked your observation about the blood sinking into his cheeks, because so much about his painting is about gravity really, and about gravitas. Again, if the priest would be raising the host, the idea is that you would sense the weight of the holy wafer. The weight of Christ’s body who died for our sins. So a lot of the composition is sort of meditation on weight, on gravity, on carrying Christ. Actually on the left wing is the visitation where we can see Mary holding her left hand on her pregnant belly, so she is carrying Christ being pregnant. On the right wing, we see the high priest Simeon in the temple holding up the Christ child. And on the outer wing, Saint Christopher, who was the patron saint of the Arquebusiers’. And he carries the Christ child on his shoulder. The other outer wing, a hermit is seen holding a lantern. So most of this is really about holding and carrying and the weight of Christ and the light he brings. You can really tell how light almost emanates from Christ’s dead body while everything else and the edges of the picture are in darkness.

0:04:18.6 Dr. Zucker: The very clearly defined features of the man directly behind the high priest is actually a portrait.

0:04:25.4 Dr. Watteeuw: This is Nicolaas Rockox, the headman of the Arquebusiers’ Guild, whom Rubens would call a friend and patron. And so he’s included here in the guise of a bystander witnessing this event. What’s changed after the Council of Trent is that the church tried to define the roles in which patrons could be depicted within pictures. And whereas earlier on, sometimes patrons would have themselves included on the central panel or in very close association with major figures from the Bible, it was established later that they should only occupy side panels, and not in very prominent position. So Rubens and Rockox have adhered here to the prescriptions of the church by finding a way to include him that completely agrees with counter affirmation policy.

0:05:12.3 Dr. Zucker: I think it’s worth spending just a moment with the face of Simeon. His eyes seem as if they’re crying and looking up to God, with a deep thankfulness as he holds the infant body of Christ. It is such a tender and human expression. Rubens has this ability to capture emotion that is so profound and so fleeting.

0:05:33.2 Dr. Watteeuw: There’s something very ecstatic about him, which you’d only see in this type of religious painting. But there’s also something very relatable about this man. You have to imagine Rubens is building his family at this point. He has a daughter, he has a son, so he can relate to seeing a grandfather holding his grandchild for the very first time. So while he’s able to depict his almost lofty concepts and events, he also makes them accessible. He can convey this fundamental human emotion that everyone who has ever held a grandchild will recognize.

0:06:07.6 Dr. Zucker: But if you look at the left panel, the visitation is placed on a high platform, which is supported by an arch, which we can see through. But that almost begins the movement of the central panel. And at the upper right corner, we can see an arc again. So it’s as if there’s a continuity in the composition of these soft arcing forms.

0:06:28.4 Dr. Watteeuw: Yes, there’s always a sinuous movement throughout Rubens’s compositions. He has a way of giving a certain musicality, I think, to a composition. In the Elevation, it’s pretty loud. You can hear the creaking of the ropes. You can hear a dog panting and barking. You have a horse winnowing and snorting, babies crying, officers shouting, and the executioners grunting. But here the tone is much softer. There’s a conversation between Mary and Elizabeth when Christ is deposed from the cross. You can tell this happens in reverent silence. The moment in the temple, again is one of quiet devotion, and the whole picture really suffuses this rest and quiet.

This work at the Cathedral of Our Lady, Antwerp

Arts and heritage from VISITFLANDERS

Flemish Masters

David Freedberg, “Painting and the Counter Reformation in the Age of Rubens,” The Age of Rubens, exhibition catalogue (Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1993), pp.131–46.

Cynthia Lawrence, “Before the Raising of the Cross: The Origins of Rubens’s Earliest Antwerp Altarpieces,” The Art Bulletin, volume 81, number 2 (1999), pp. 267–96.

John R. Martin, Rubens: the Antwerp altarpieces: The raising of the Cross, The descent from the Cross (London: Thames and Hudson, 1969).

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