Editions
Altarpiece of the Joiners' Guild
For Good Friday
Sizes
One object, one inventory number: KMSKA holds the three panels as 245-249 and they are sold whole. Three sheets, one edition - from $470.
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Christ lies on a white cloth across the width of the ground, and an old man holds His head as if it might still wake. Our Lady kneels over Him in blue with her hands pressed together; John stands behind in red and holds her up. On the hill the two other men still hang. The joiners of Antwerp ordered this triptych from Quinten Massys for their altar in the Cathedral of Our Lady, finished in 1511, and set their two patrons beside the dead Christ: the Baptist's head on Herod's table at left, the Evangelist in boiling oil at right. The KMSKA reads the whole as grief and evil, and finds in the executioners' faces the grotesque heads Leonardo was drawing in the same years, which Massys must somehow have seen. It survived the fire of 1533 and the Iconoclastic Fury of 1566, and it hangs in Antwerp still.
Made for Made for the altar of the joiners' guild in the Cathedral of Our Lady in Antwerp, where each guild of the city's artisans kept an altar of its own; commissioned from Massys in 1511 and in the city ever since. source
KMSKA's order: the Beheading of John the Baptist on the left, the Lamentation at the centre, the Martyrdom of Saint John on the right - the triptych open, 260 cm tall and 503 cm across in Antwerp. All three panels are the same height, so the tiers are built to hang the printed images level: within 0.00% on Wall and 0.00% on Grand.
| Held by | KMSKA, Antwerp · 245-249 the museum’s record |
|---|---|
| Source file | Wikimedia Commons · Quinten Massijs - Beheading of John the Baptist, 1511, 246.tif |
| Licence | Public domain |
| Panel · beheading | Altarpiece of the Joiners' Guild — Beheading of John the Baptist (left wing) — 3,260 × 6,987 px |
| Panel · lamentation | Altarpiece of the Joiners' Guild — The Lamentation over the Dead Christ — 7,364 × 7,023 px |
| Panel · martyrdom | Altarpiece of the Joiners' Guild — The Martyrdom of Saint John the Evangelist (right wing) — 3,191 × 6,952 px |
| Chain | Each panel taken from the source file above and cut to its own painted field; held as 3 print masters. |
Printed on demand as one edition. The whole image is printed on every sheet — never cropped to fit — so each panel carries an archival margin.