ABSTRACT
Following an Italian sojourn of almost a decade, Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) returned to Antwerp in December 1608 and shortly afterwards began work on the Raising of the Cross (Figure 12.1),1 a monumental triptych commissioned for the high altar of the Burchtkerk.2 The triptych’s interior and exterior panels were mounted in a wooden frame of a sixteenth-century design, set above a heavy stone altar table.3 Thirty-five feet high, and twenty-four feet wide, the open triptych presents a dramatic panoramic scene of the Crucifixion.4 In the centre panel a triumphant figure of Christ, nailed to his cross and looking upward beyond the canvas to the depiction of God in the gable, is surrounded by a group of Roman soldiers, Michaelangelesque brutes and other figures who manoeuvre his cross into an upright position. In the right wing a * I would like to thank Barbara Haeger and David Lawrence for reading earlier drafts of this work. I am grateful to Simon Ditchfield for generously sharing his extensive knowledge of bibliography, Italian churches and early Baroque altarpieces, and to Andrew Spicer, for urging me to rethink some of the ideas in this essay. 1 J.R. Judson, Rubens. The Passion of Christ (Turnhout, 2000), pp. 89-90. 2 The church originally called the Burchtkerk was dedicated during the course of its long history to a number of different saints; I have retained the older name, rather than the more commonly used name of St Walburga’s to avoid confusion. 3 I would like to thank Valerie Hermanns for generously sharing with me her thoughts about the frame for the Raising of the Cross. Judson, Rubens, p. 91, considers that in the original programme Rubens introduced a new unification of the top and middle zones of the altarpiece, and the fluttering movements of the angels above stress the sense of action beyond the confines of the actual picture structure. He considers this to be the first display of a fully Baroque interpretation of space in a northern altarpiece; it was to become even more pronounced in
mounted armoured soldier appears in the foreground with the two thieves being readied for their crucifixion in the background. The left wing includes figures of Mary and St John the Evangelist, with a group of weeping women and children in the foreground: both groups are directed towards the raising of the cross in the centre panel. Set in the darkened choir and dramatically lit by the lancet windows on the right, the Raising of the Cross appeared to fill the elevated choir, thereby contributing to an illusion that the Crucifixion was actually happening before the laity standing in the crossing and the nave.
