Introduction

After the Spanish diplomat Vicente Alvarez, visiting Binche in 1549, saw Rogier van der Weyden’s ca. 1435 Descent from the Cross (Plate 1) in Mary of Austria’s new castle chapel, he described it as “the best picture in all the castle and even, I believe, in the entire world, because I have seen in these regions many wonderful paintings but none that equals this in naturalism and devotion. All who saw it were of the same opinion.” He added that Mary had an “almost as good” copy madeby Michiel Coxcie, Joannes Molanus later records-to replace the original in Leuven.1 Mary of Austria was by no means the first to order a copy of this famous painting; in 1443, almost immediately following its creation, the Edelheer family commissioned a replica for the Sint-Pieterskerk in Leuven, and numerous additional partial or full copies followed; probably it remains the work most frequently reproduced in whole or part by fifteenth-and sixteenth-century northern artists.2