Brussels School, 16th Century

This unusual work is a product of the Brussels school, and reveals the strong influence of Bernard van Orley, one of the city's most prominent painters in the early sixteenth century.  The blocky figure types, their gestures and the grouping beneath the cross may ultimately derive from such works as Orley’s Christ on the Cross in Berlin (Friedländer 112)¹and we see a similar view of a distant city in the Christ on the Cross with Caritas and Justicia, in Rotterdam (Friedländer 113). 

What is perhaps unique in this composition is the inclusion of the figures crowded tightly together in a cave-like space beneath Golgotha.  They can be identified as men and women from the Old Testament and New Testament, pre-figurers of Christ waiting to be freed from Limbo.  As virtuous but unbaptized souls this can only happen at the Last Judgment, but the Crucifixion is a necessary precursor for that event.  They include, at the left front, Adam discretely clothed and clutching an apple, and to the right Eve; Abraham and Isaac, who carries the kindling for his own sacrifice; King David with his harp; John the Baptist, with a lamb; and Joseph, with his flowering staff. 

1 M.J. Friedländer, Early Netherlandish Painting, vol. 8, Jan Gossart and Bernart van Orley, New York 1972.