Pala d'altare di Montfoort

This is not by van Dyck, though the design is his. It is a careful copy of a Crucifixion by Anthony van Dyck, painted around 1680, roughly 40 years after van Dyck himself had died. It still serves as an altarpiece in the Catholic church of Saint John the Baptist in Montfoort, a small town in the Netherlands. There is a quiet history in that arrangement. The Dutch Republic was officially Protestant, and its Catholic parishes generally worked with modest means and little display. A country church like this one was never going to own an original van Dyck, so a skilled hand supplied the next best thing, a faithful version of a famous composition, close enough to carry the same weight above the altar. The scene is the familiar one: Christ on the cross, mourned by the figures gathered below.