COECKE VAN AELST, Pieter

The foreground of this drawing was executed in pen and ink, and the rest of it in black chalk. The main scene of the Old Testament story in which Isaac is about to be sacrificed on the hilltop is missing since it was painted over with wash imitating clouds either by the artist himself or someone else.

Before the arrival of the soldiers brought by Judas to place Christ under arrest, he must complete his player and awaken the apostles. Curiously, as a consequence of the artist’s pursuit of verisimilitude in depicting the sequence, setting, and details of the Gospel story, the cup - a figure of speech in Christ’s appeal to God - has become material in the form of a monument erected on the top of the hill.

This altarpiece is an intact example of Antwerp retable collaboration of painters and sculptors. Installed in a shrine of the distinctive, Antwerp bell-shaped format, the wings are painted, attributed to the workshop of Pieter Coecke van Aelst, but the centre is carved. When closed, the altarpiece shows scenes from the adulthood and mission of Christ, ranging from the Baptism to the Transfiguration with scenes of miraculous healing. Inside the painted wings flank the carved scenes in a continuous Passion narrative, extending from the Arrest to the Resurrection. In the centre are densely figures carvings of the Carrying the Cross, a raised Crucifixion, and a Deposition. The altarpiece also contains smaller Old Testament scenes, on carved corbels as well as painted predellas.

Christ’s dead body rests on the Virgin Mary’s lap and is supported on the left by St John and on the right by Nicodemus.

On the left-side panel the man in the prosperous clothes represents Joseph of Arimathea. He is identified by the crown of thorns. The right-side panel shows Mary Magdalen, identified by the jar of ointment with which she anointed Jesus’s feet.

Because the figures are depicted in the foreground, they involve the viewer in the events they portray and encourage a sense of empathy with Christ’s passion and Mar’s grief. This triptych was freely adapted from a work by Rogier van der Weyden by the workshop of Coecke and Aelst.

In the first half of the 16th century the fame of Brussels surpassed that of other centres (Tournai, Enghien, Audenarde) in Flemish tapestry. The traditional style was modified under the influence of such painters as Bernaert van Orley and Pieter Coecke van Aelst, and the clarity of Italian composition was combined with Flemish richness and precision in the great creations of the weavers of Brussels about 1530-60.

Coecke van Aelst and his workshop in Antwerp produced a number of panels with religious subjects. One of his most popular compositions was the Last Supper, of which forty-one copies survive, the last one executed thirteen years after Coecke’s death. The painter exploited the popularity of Leonardo’s famous Last Supper in Milan which was well known through engravings and copies.

This drawing is the fourth of a series of six designs for stained glass panes produced in the workshop of Pieter Coecke van Aelst. The scenes are based on Petrarch’ Trionfi, a long allegorical poem.

The central panel of the triptych shows the Adoration of the Magi, while the wings depict the Annunciation (left) and the Adoration of the Shepherds (right).

Coecke’s style is characterised by sophisticate elegant figures, dynamic attitudes and the luxurious details of preciously painted clothes, in keeping with the canons of the Mannerist trend that was prevalent in Antwerp after 1520, the time of his training. Other characteristic traits of his style are his precise draughtsmanship and enamel-like surfaces, not to mention the volume and shaping of the figures.

The central panel depicts the Adoration of the Magi, while the left and right wings represent St Joseph and Balthasar, respectively.

The Lamentation over the Dead Christ is an iconographic theme that had a great impact on European painting. In this scene that occupies the centre of the triptych, Christ’s body is supported by Joseph of Arimathea, and the Virgin Mary is attended by St John in the presence of Mary Magdalene. The side wings again depict Joseph of Arimathea and Mary Magdalene, a figure inspired by the one portrayed by Rogier van der Weyden around 1435 in his Descent from the Cross kept in the Prado Museum.

In the background, a landscape extends into the wings of the triptych, in the central area of which we see the Golgotha with crosses and a few figures beside a precipitous peak. Branches of slender trees with little foliage can be seen on the lobes of the wings on the triptych - that has preserved its original frame, - a common feature in Coecke.

This is one of the many triptychs of the Adoration of the Magi produced by the artist.

Coecke van Aelst had made drawings in Constantinople that were intended for tapestry projects made for the Ottoman Sultan, Suleyman the Magnificent. These are preserved in a series of woodcuts “Ces moeurs et fachons de faire de Turcz,” published posthumously by his wife in 1553. The woodcuts are interesting mostly for their historical and topographical features.