Christ Bearing the Cross

By the time this panel was painted, around 1530, Antwerp had become the busiest art market in Europe, and a scene like Christ carrying his cross was among the most requested subjects a workshop could offer. Pieter Coecke van Aelst ran one of the largest shops in the city, and compositions like this one were produced more than once, for private buyers who wanted a Passion image to pray before at home. The panel packs the road to Calvary with jostling figures, so that Christ, sinking under the weight of the cross, is almost lost in the crowd pressing around him. That density was part of the appeal, giving the eye a great deal to search through and the devout viewer many faces to dwell on. Oil on a wooden panel a little over three feet high, it was made to be looked at closely, at arm's length, in a room rather than a church.