Altarpiece: Christ Bearing the Cross

CultureNetherlandish

Date1500-1525

MediumWood

DimensionsOverall: 18 × 14 1/4 × 5 inches (45.72 × 36.2 × 12.7 cm)

Credit LinePurchase: William Rockhill Nelson Trust

Object number41-10/5

On View

On view

Gallery Location

Collections

European Art

Terms

Exhibition History

N/A

Gallery Label

This panel is one of five panels that represent five scenes from the life of Christ: the Flagellation, the Way to Calvary, the Crucifixion, the Entombment and the Resurrection. They would originally have been part of a larger altarpiece with architectural motifs and painted in bright colors. In early 16th-century Flanders, carved altarpieces like this were as common in churches as paintings. The crowded narrative is typical of the late Gothic style, and accents the emotional intensity of the scenes; for example, in the Flagellation panel at the far left, the sacrificial Christ is beset by his tormentors.

Provenance

Mr. von Bosch, Mettlach, Germany;

With Arnold Seligmann, Rey and Co., New York, by February 9, 1932;

Purchased from Arnold Seligmann, Rey and Co. by William Randolph Hearst (1863-1951), New York and San Simeon, CA, February 9, 1932-April 30, 1941 [1];

Purchased from Hearst by Gimbel Brothers, Inc., New York, April 30, 1941;

Purchased from Gimbel Brothers, through Hammer Galleries and Harold Woodbury Parsons, by The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1941.

NOTES:

[1] William Randolph Hearst Archive, Long Island University Post (S/B lot 872, art. 1, Album 50, p. 14).

Published References

Art Objects and Furnishings from the William Randolph Hearst Collection: Catalogue Raisonné Comprising Illustrations of Representative Works Together with Comprehensive Descriptions of Books, Autographs and Manuscripts, and Complete Index (New York: William Bradford, 1941), 73, 299, (repro.), as Carved Oakwood Altar.

Dorothy Gillerman, Gothic Sculpture in America, vol. 2, The Museums of the Midwest (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2001), 224-25, (repro.), as Altarpiece with the Passion of Christ.

“Masterpiece for the Month of May, 1941,” Gallery News (The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts) (May 1941): unpaginated, as Altar Retable.

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