Triptych with the Crucifixion

Antwerp in the 1520s and 1530s was one of the busiest picture markets in Europe. Workshops painted devotional panels in quantity for buyers they would never meet, dealers shipped them abroad, and in 1540 the painters were given their own sales hall on the upper floor of the city's new exchange.

This small triptych came out of that trade, from a workshop known only by a conventional name, which made pictures like this one for private prayer alongside its half-length ladies. The Crucifixion spreads across all three panels. Christ hangs in the centre, and each wing holds one of the two thieves crucified with him, one among soldiers, the other beside the holy women.

The Galleria Sabauda dates it only broadly, to about 1520 to 1540.