Crucifixion with a Donor

This is an early Bosch, painted around 1480, and it is unusual in his work for how calm and conventional it is. There are no monsters here, none of the nightmares he became famous for. Instead it follows a formula that 15th-century patrons knew well. At the foot of the cross kneels the man who paid for the picture, in dark clothes, hands pressed together in prayer. Behind him stands Saint Peter, holding the key that identifies him, presenting his kneeling protege and vouching for him. Peter turns toward Saint John, John toward the Virgin, and the Virgin prays to her son on the cross, a chain of intercession passing the donor's plea upward. No other crucifixion by Bosch is known, and it is one of only a few of his paintings to include a portrait of the person who commissioned it, kneeling quietly at the edge of a sober townscape.