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New Findings on the Function of
Rogier van der Weyden’s
Philadelphia
Crucifixion
Mark S. Tucker, Philadelphia Museum
of Art
Since first published in 1906, the
two panels that together form the
Philadelphia Crucifixion
have been attributed nearly
unanimously to Rogier van der
Weyden. Nevertheless, the work has
eluded any convincing
identification with prevalent forms
or display contexts. The work’s
large size, the arrangement of the
composition across two separate
panels, the reductive treatment of
narrative, space and detail, the
full, naturalistic coloring, and
high quality of execution, taken
together, do not fit more–familiar
paradigms of early Netherlandish
painted altarpiece wings or
independent devotional paintings.
Technical and stylistic study
presented in this paper, however,
support the placement of the
painting’s origin in a very
specific class of objects with
which it has not previously been
associated: paintings made for the
wing exteriors of Netherlandish
carved altarpieces.
The identification of the
Philadelphia panels as components
of carved retable wings was deduced
from the occurrence together of
traits of carpentry, scale,
proportions, and pictorial style
found among extant carved
altarpieces. It is known that the
panels were thin for their size,
consistent with the stock
traditionally used for large wings.
The telling technical link
specifically to carved altarpieces
is a horizontal row of clearly
original dowel holes that pass
through both panels near the bottom
edge. This feature of joinery, not
otherwise encountered in the
construction, framing, or mounting
of Netherlandish panel paintings,
indicates the presence of a
structural member spanning the
reverse of the panel. That member’s
position falls proportionally
within the range occupied by a
typical feature of the shallow,
boxlike structures, or
caisses, that house the
sculpture on carved retables’
interiors: the shelf that supports
the sculpture and forms the top
crosspiece of the tracery-fronted
compartments across the bottom.
Precedents for the dowel joinery
seen in the Philadelphia panels are
found in the wing caisses of
the Hakendover altarpiece of
1400-10, and the panel of the
Frankfurt Flémalle Virgin and
Child, which exhibits dowel
holes posited in 1997 by Stephan
Kemperdick to be an indication of
that work’s origin in a carved
retable.
Beyond the structural evidence,
comparisons with key formal and
stylistic features of the
Philadelphia panels and can be
found on the exterior paintings of
a wide sampling of Netherlandish
carved altarpieces. Traits noted as
consistent with the distinct
traditions of carved retable
exterior paintings include large
overall size, the breadth of the
composition (particularly the large
scale of the figures relative to
format) and its continuation across
adjacent panels. Also cited are the
Philadelphia panels’ full coloring
(in contrast to the tendency toward
the grisaille of many solely
painted altarpieces’ exteriors) and
the placement of the scene before a
wall draped with cloths of honor,
creating a shallow, friezelike
space comparable to that of the
interior sculptural compartments.
Tethering the painting’s space to
the same constraints, forms, and
artifice of the carved interior
acknowledges sculptural space on
its own terms, and ties it, in
turn, to the illusionistic
capacities of painting.
Comparative study of carved
altarpiece forms also supports
inferences about the appearance of
the proposed altarpiece from which
the Philadelphia panels came, based
upon the most prevalent traits of
such altarpieces. As for format,
the most common overall shape for
large carved altarpieces is the
so-called “inverted ‘T’”, but
whether or not a raised center
section was present, the lower,
main tier, which the panels would
have occupied, is almost without
exception a horizontal rectangle;
the Philadelphia panels together,
however, form very nearly a square,
so they were most likely two of
four large panels spanning the face
of the closed altarpiece. The width
of such an altarpiece would have
exceeded by a small amount (10% or
less) that of the largest
comparable work. The altarpiece was
probably a narrative cycle with
large sculpture groups, a suggested
paradigm of the general type being
the partially visible Passion
retable depicted beyond the choir
screen in the Antwerp Triptych
of the Seven Sacraments.
One aspect of the Philadelphia
painting that is not typical of
carved altarpiece exteriors is the
Crucifixion subject; however, the
observation by Griet Steyaert that
the wing exteriors of the small
carved altarpiece now in the
Brussels Centre publique d'Aide
sociale, which show a divided
Crucifixion scene reminiscent of
the Philadelphia panels, shows that
other examples of the subject and
form on wing exteriors did exist.
If the Philadelphia panels were two
of four across, the subject(s) and
position of the two lost panels
(i.e., both to one side, or one to
either side of the Philadelphia
pair) remains undetermined.
The present evidence that the
Crucifixion was not an
independent work, but a calculated
counterpart to sculpture,
introduces for consideration highly
specific challenges of creation and
presentation, and a more valid
framework for comparison with other
works, in accord with Paul
Philippot’s observations about
carved altarpiece paintings: that
they reflect a distinct tradition,
with idiomatic conceptual
preferences, that they were created
as integrated components of the
specific, hermetic reality of those
altarpieces. Such paintings may
therefore exhibit a disregard for
key spatial and illusionistic
potentialities pursued otherwise in
progressive 15th century painting,
insofar as those potentialities
were perceived to be in conflict
with carved altarpieces’ particular
programmatic and visual
requirements.
The functional scenario raised by
this research raises the potential
for better-informed appreciation of
the Philadelphia
Crucifixion. Long praised as
an independent work, it is
suggested that the newly proposed
context may clarify and enrich the
distinction of the painting. There
is now potential for its assessment
as an image made to mediate between
the exterior world and the higher
sanctity of an altarpiece interior,
or between private worship and
formal ritual. Long appreciated in
its own right as a transfixing
object of contemplation and
devotion, the Philadelphia painting
might now be appraised equally for
its deeply considered relationship
to the sculpture revealed when the
wings were opened. In fact, perhaps
the greatest achievement of this
work, as we may now regard it, is
the way it was conceived to serve
both its static function—as a
powerful devotional image—and its
transitional function—as an
allusion, foil, and threshold to
sculpture.
The formal traits of the
Philadelphia Crucifixion are
not found on every carved
altarpiece and some not only on
them, but by far the comparisons
that best account for its combined
technical and formal features are
to be found among carved
altarpieces. If, as proposed here,
these panels came from a sculptural
high altarpiece of extraordinary
size, they, large in scale, boldly
composed, and occupying the face
the altarpiece most often on view,
were its most dominant imagery. As
the conspicuous representation of
the painter’s eminence and
authority, and vital to the potency
of the altarpiece as a whole, it is
easy to see why Rogier van der
Weyden himself would have assumed
such direct responsibility for
design and execution of this
Crucifixion, and why his
celebrated grasp of the shared and
exclusive capacities of painting
and sculpture would result in the
transcendent example of its kind.
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