The Lamentation of Christ
The original, as its museum records it
Every line above is reproduced from the holding institution’s own catalogue entry, which is linked. Where their title, date or attribution differs from ours, theirs is the one printed here.
The file this print is made from
Sizes
About this painting
Jan Michielsen died in June 1617, and his widow, Maria Maes, ordered this for his grave in Antwerp cathedral. The wings carry their name saints: her Virgin, his John the Evangelist.
Closed, it showed grisaille only. Opened, a dead man on a stone that looks like an altar, strewn with straw — wheat, the grain of the bread of the Mass, laid under the body the Mass claims to make present. On the left wing the Christ Child stands as the Host stands on the altar cloth.
No evangelist narrates the Lamentation. The grief is what the Gospels leave out.
Sources: Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten Antwerpen, inv. 300 · Lynn F. Jacobs, "Rubens and the Northern Past: The Michielsen Triptych and the Thresholds of Modernity," The Art Bulletin 91, no. 3 (2009) · J. Richard Judson, The Passion of Christ, Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard VI (Harvey Miller/Brepols, 2000) · the conservation — yellowed varnish removed, and scans showing Rubens changed the composition, Christ having initially been more covered
Printed on demand. Public-domain masterwork, reproduced from a 16,377 px master of the original. The whole image is printed — never cropped to fit the sheet — so every sheet carries an archival margin, and the dimensions and resolution listed above are the ones you receive.