Christus am Kreuz zwischen den beiden Schächern

Van Dyck was barely 20 when he painted this, still in Antwerp and still working close to Rubens, whose busiest and most gifted assistant he was. The subject is the moment on Calvary with Christ raised between the two condemned men crucified beside him, one who mocks him and one, by tradition, who repents. You can see how much the young painter had taken from the older master, the muscular bodies, the darkened sky, the strong diagonals pulling the eye upward. Within a few years Van Dyck would leave for Italy and become the elegant portraitist England remembers, court painter to Charles I. This early religious picture belongs to the Antwerp years, before any of that, when he was still measuring himself against Rubens down the street.