The Calvary

Around 1520, a painter in Leiden filled this tall panel with the last hours of Christ, laid out so that a believer's eye could follow them one by one. The story starts far off, where a crowd pours out of the gate of Jerusalem and he collapses under his burden. It ends on the hill, with the crucifixion.

The foreground belongs to the waiting in between. A henchman bends over the cross and bores holes into it with a hand drill. A little further back, Jesus sits stripped on the timber. Nearby the two thieves are given a drink, and the high priest Annas, on horseback, gives orders. A skull and a dog lie at the bottom edge.

The Rijksmuseum bought the panel in 1996 and lent it from 2004 to 2010 to the Lakenhal, the city museum of Leiden, the town where the Rijksmuseum places its making.