Christ expiring on the cross

On 23 October 1942, in occupied Amsterdam, this panel was sold under duress to Hans Posse, the art historian who was buying for the museum Hitler planned in his home town of Linz. Its owner, José Vigeveno, was a Jewish businessman who had once helped run the gallery of his uncle, the dealer Jacques Goudstikker. Vigeveno died in 1943 in Westerbork, the camp in the Netherlands through which Jews were deported east.

Allied officers recovered the painting in July 1945 and logged it at their collecting point in Munich, and in July 1946 it was shipped back to Amsterdam for his family.

Rubens painted it around 1610 to 1612. The museum draws attention to how alive this Christ still is, young and muscular, his eyes raised toward heaven, at the moment before death rather than after it. When the panel came up at the art fair in Maastricht in 2012, it sold within the first hour to the collectors Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo, and it now belongs to the group of paintings they have promised to the museum.