Attributed to Pseudo Jan Wellens de Cock

This label holds two layers of caution. Pseudo Jan Wellens de Cock is already a stand-in, the name for an unknown painter active from about 1520 to 1540 whose pictures were once linked to a real Antwerp artist. Attributed to adds one more step back. The Rijksmuseum places this triptych with that group without being sure the same hand painted it.

The small altarpiece, from about 1525, shows the Crucifixion in the centre. On the wings a man and a woman kneel with their patron saints, Peter and James, and angels above them carry coats of arms that no one has yet identified. With the wings closed, Saint Christopher carries the Christ Child. The museum gives two possible places of origin, Leiden and Antwerp.

At the Paris sale of the collector Frédéric Spitzer in 1893 it was sold as German school. The Rijksmuseum bought it in July of that year from the Paris dealer Durand-Ruel.