Descimento da Cruz

Van Dyck was still a teenager when he painted this, around 1618, working in Antwerp close to the older and hugely successful Peter Paul Rubens, whose influence shows in the muscular bodies and the surge of feeling. Christ has been taken down from the cross and laid out, and the picture is built around grief: the Virgin above her son with her eyes turned to heaven, Mary Magdalene kissing his hand in farewell, a small winged child collapsed in tears at the front, and the crown of thorns and nails set to one side. That he could handle so much emotion so young marked him out early as a major talent. Within a few years he had left for Italy, and eventually London, where he became court painter to Charles I.