The Virgin, Saint John the Evangelist and the Three Maries

Christ nailed to the Cross was once the central part of a triptych; it was originally flanked by two panels now owned by the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp. On the left was Pilate and the Chief Priests, which shows the Roman governor Pontius Pilate on a white horse surrounded by a group of men, some armed, some in exotic clothes. The Virgin, Saint John the Evangelist and the Three Marys was on the right. It shows a grieving Virgin Mary, supported by Saint John and accompanied by Mary Magdalene and two other women.

The central panel measures 49.5 by 95.2 cm, while the Antwerp panels are both around 45 by 42 cm; if the wings were set in frames 5 cm wide they would cover the central section when closed. We don‘t know when the wings were separated from the central panel.

Together the three panels make sense as a Crucifixion scene, as they include all the characters you would normally find in one. The whole triptych presumably stood on an altar, although we don’t know where; our painting was in northern Italy in the nineteenth century. Perhaps it was made for a private chapel where it would have formed the backdrop for the Mass.

The altarpiece is one of David’s earliest surviving works, painted in or after 1481. It is similar to, though not as well composed or drawn as, his Flaying of Sisamnes (Groeningemuseum, Bruges), which was finished in 1498 but perhaps begun in 1491 or even earlier. The two pictures share a kind of practical cruelty, as the torturers carry out their jobs with brutal efficiency.