Descent from the Cross

In this dramatic Descent, the figure of Joseph of Arimathea on the right picks up the body of Christ with the help of Nicodemus, while St John supports the Blessed Virgin, who has fainted from sorrow. The five characters fill the composition, virtually covering the golden ground with black dots - a Gothic archaism of Flemish tradition - in the two upper corners. Painted with great technical precision, the superimposition of layers of colour is beautiful, in spite of the erosion and the transparencies of the pictorial layer.

This work could have derived from a lost prototype by Rogier van der Weyden, for such complex compositions and forced perspectives are characteristic of his works. The figure of the Virgin is inspired by the Madonna painted by Van der Weyden around 1435 in his Descent from the Cross kept in the Prado Museum. He also sought inspiration in Hugo van der Goes for the figure of Joseph of Arimathea, probably based on the bearded man holding a curtain in The Adoration of the Shepherds of 1480, now kept in the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin.

Four other versions of The Descent from the Cross attributed to Colyn de Coter exist, all of which follow a similar pattern.