Christ Nailed to the Cross

The National Gallery dates this panel to about 1481, a few years before Gerard David first appears in the records of Bruges, in 1484, which puts it among the earliest pictures linked to him. It was the centre of a triptych whose wings, showing Pilate with the chief priests and the Virgin with Saint John and the holy women, are now in the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp. The Gospels never describe the nailing itself. The scene came from devotional books, and David sets it on open ground, where one man digs with a spade while others hammer and pull at the feet. Christ turns his face toward us. Infrared study shows that David first had him looking upward and then changed his mind. In the foreground a small dog sniffs at a skull, traditionally Adam's.