“The Crucifixion,” by one of the most celebrated artists of his time, the Flemish artist Rogier van der Weyden made near the end of the artist’s life, was brought to Spain in the 16th century. Once hung in the sacristy of the El Escorial complex’s main structure, a massive royal monastery commissioned by Spanish King Philip II, it was later moved to a less conspicuous spot in the 17th century.
19 rare works by van der Weyden and other 15th-century artists are now vividly exhibited until June 28 against a dark-blue background at the Madrid’s Prado Museum.
Crucifixion Diptych (c.1460), Rogier van der Weyden. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Coming closer to 14 Nisan, Pesach remembering the last supper of Jeshua and his impalement we can have a closer look at the most influential northern artist of the 15th century and the way the death of Christ was presented at that time and got such an influence on Christendom that still to day many people take it that Jesus died on such a two beam torture cross, though at the time of the Romans this was not yet used. Jesus Christ was nailed on a vertical wooden beam.
The artistic liberty of imagining a more spectacular composition and more dramatic position, this with by fluency of line, rhythmic composition, and expressive intensity makes us stand in wonder and pardoning the historical truth.
Rogier van der Weyden with Jan van Eyck, and Robert Campin can be called founding fathers of the main traditions of early Netherlandish painting and his formal beauty and spiritual intensity made Netherlandish painting more readily accessible to succeeding generations of artists than the work of his two major contemporaries.
The Descent from the Cross, may be considered as one of his most famous works, for the guild crossbowmen of Louvain. His best-known works include a Last Judgment altarpiece that measures 18 feet (5.5m) in width, made for Nicolas Rolin, Chancellor of Burgundy in Beaune (late 1440s) in which we can find a Gothic influence; as well as the Braque Triptych, Adoration of the Magi, St. Luke Painting the Virgin, the Deposition panel and the Viennese Crucifixion Triptych (1440-1445) we can find a boundary between the early style and the mature phase of Weyden’s work. The painting still retains several Eyckian features, such as the continuous landscape background across all three panels, but it also introduces a new emotive quality in the sense of dramatic immediacy.
The Last Judgment Polyptych (1445–1450) by Rogier van der Weyden, Hôtel-Dieu of Beaune, France. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
With the Prado’s “The Descent from the Cross,” moved for the first time in decades from its home in a lower-floor gallery we can find a show worth visiting, having 19 rare works and the classics from all over the world brought together with the “Miraflores Triptych,” from the Berlin State Museums’ Gemäldegalerie and “The Seven Sacraments” from Antwerp’s Royal Museum of Fine Arts.
Museo del Prado, Madrid (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
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Marcus Ampe
Biblestudents – Bijbelstudenten
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Free Christadelphian Ecclesia
Hoop tot Leven – Redding in Christus
Vrije Broeders in Christus (Free Flemish Christadelphians on Wordpress)
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