The Crucifixion

This altarpiece was painted for Metz, and it never went there. The king's household, the department that managed the crown's commissions, ordered it from Prud'hon for the cathedral of Metz in eastern France. He signed it at the foot of the cross, P.P. Prud'hon, 1822, on a canvas almost three metres tall. Christ hangs against a dark sky, and below him, as the Louvre's long French title spells out, Mary Magdalene and the Virgin have sunk down at his feet.

Prud'hon died in February 1823. That July the picture was taken into the collection of King Louis XVIII by an exchange recorded in the Louvre's inventory. Metz would receive a copy instead, made by Charles Boulanger de Boisfrémont, Prud'hon's pupil and friend, and paid for with 3,000 francs. So the cathedral got the replica, and the original stayed in Paris. It now hangs in the Salle Mollien, among the large Romantic canvases.