The Crucifixion

Joachim Beuckelaer is remembered for kitchens and market stalls where the Bible story shrinks to a few small figures at the back. This little square panel turns that round. The sacred subject fills all of it, and it was probably never meant as a finished picture. The Louvre calls it a modello, a model kept to a narrow range of tones, perhaps made for an engraver to copy.

The composition falls into two halves. On the left the two thieves hang on rough tree trunks while soldiers work at their feet, one bent over a basket of tools. On the right stands the cross of Christ, with the Virgin collapsing into the arms of John and the holy women, and a walled city on the hills behind. Beuckelaer repeated each half in a separate drawing, both also in the Louvre and possibly designs for stained glass. A near-identical version dated two years earlier, of much weaker quality, was sold in Brussels in 1927. On this one he put his initials and the date 1567 on a tree trunk at the lower right.