La Descente de croix

This was made for the chapel of the crossbowmen's guild in Leuven, and van der Weyden left their signature in it twice. In the upper corners, worked into the painted tracery, hang two tiny crossbows. Then there is the body of Christ itself, lowered from the cross with the back arched and the arm hanging in a long curve that echoes the shape of a drawn bow. Instead of setting the scene in a landscape, the painter squeezed all ten near life-size figures into a shallow gilded box, like the carved and painted altarpieces of the day come to life. The most striking move is at the bottom. Mary has fainted and collapsed, and her body falls in almost exactly the same pose and line as her dead son above her, so that grief mirrors the death that caused it. Look at the single tear frozen on the cheek of Mary Magdalene at the right.