The Ascension of Christ

Around 1490, when Memling painted this right wing of his Resurrection triptych, his way of showing the Ascension was already some 500 years old. It began with English manuscript painters in the late 10th century, who showed only the feet of the rising Saviour vanishing into a cloud, and it became the favourite form in northern Europe. The art historian Meyer Schapiro named it the Disappearing Christ in 1943. Here it fills the top of the panel. All that is left of him is the hem of a dark robe and two bare feet in a bright break in the clouds. Below, the Virgin in a white veil and the apostles crowd together, most with their hands pressed in prayer, every face turned upward. One apostle kneels at the front in a red cloak with his back to us.