Crucifixion and Last Judgement diptych

This diptych is one of the early Northern Renaissance oil-on-panel masterpieces, renowned for its unusually complex and highly detailed iconography, and for the technical skill evident in its completion.

[5] On the evidence of technique and the style of dress of the figures, the majority of scholars believe the panels are late works by Jan van Eyck, executed in the early 1430s and finished after his death.

[9] In the 1420s and 1430s, when oil and panel painting were still in their infancy, vertical formats were often used for depictions of the Last Judgement, because the narrow framing particularly suited a hierarchical presentation of heaven, earth and hell.

To fit such expansive and highly detailed representations onto two equally small and narrow wings, van Eyck was forced to make a number of innovations, redesigning many elements of the Crucifixion panel to match the vertical and condensed presentation of the Judgement narrative.

[3][6] The result is a panel with the crosses rising high into the sky, an unusually packed crowd scene in the mid-ground, and the moving spectacle of the mourners in the foreground, all rendered in a continuous slope from bottom to top in the style of medieval tapestries.

[3] Van Eyck condenses key episodes from the gospels into a single composition, each placed so as to draw the viewer's eye upward in a logical sequence.

Given the size of the mourners in the foreground relative to the crucified figures, the soldiers and spectators gathered in the mid-ground are far larger than a strict adherence to perspective would allow.

[6] Pächt writes of this panel that the scene is "assimilated into a single spatial cosmos", with the archangel acting as a divider in the pictorial space between heaven and hell.

[2] There is no documentary evidence for an original central panel, however, and technical examination suggests the two works were intended as wings of a diptych, then an emerging format.

Here, the waning gibbous Moon is shown as it would appear in the mid-morning western sky in Judea, including major features such as the Mare Imbrium and the Oceanus Procellarum.

[18] Located outside the city walls amongst rock tombs and gardens, in the first century Golgotha was Jerusalem's place of execution,[19] and the visible patches of hill highlight the area's "stony, forbidding, and lifeless" nature.

The mourners from the foreground are reflected in the shield carried on the hip of the lance-bearing Roman soldier who leans on the man to his right wearing a red turban.

[3] His arms strain under the weight of his upper body, and in his final agony, his jaw has fallen slack; his mouth is open with his teeth exposed in the grimace of death.

[28] In the mid-ground, at the base of the cross, Longinus, on horseback, wearing a fur-trimmed hat and green tunic, guided by an assistant,[25][30] stretches to pierce Jesus' side with a lance,[20] as deep-red blood pours from the wound.

They were often included, showing strong influence from the Italian painters, but typically as minor elements of the composition, seen in the far distance and lacking any real observation of nature.

Heaven contains a traditional Great Deësis with clergy and laity; earth, in the mid-ground, is dominated by the figures of Archangel Michael and a personification of Death; while in the lower ground the damned fall into hell, where they are tortured and eaten by beasts.

[10] The sinners fall head first into their torment, at the mercy of devils taking recognisable forms such as rats, snakes and pigs, as well as a bear and a donkey.

[28] The Archangel Michael stands on death's shoulders,[6] the largest figure in the painting, whose body and wings span the entire pictorial space.

[10] Michael wears jewel-studded golden armour and has curly blond hair and multicoloured wings similar to those seen in the donor panel of van Eyck's 1437 Dresden Triptych of the Virgin and Child.

[37] Headed by Saint Peter, the Apostles are dressed in white robes and sit on two facing benches set below Christ and to the right and left of the choir of virgins.

[42] Art historian John Ward highlights the rich and complex iconography and symbolic meaning van Eyck employed to bring attention to what he saw as the co-existence of the spiritual and material worlds.

[2][32] In the upper portion, gilded inscriptions running vertically across the edges of Christ's mantle read VENITE BENEDICTI PATRIS MEI ("Come, ye blessed of my father").

The panels came into the possession of the Hermitage Gallery in 1917, credited to Jan.[13] Bryson Burroughs, writing for the Metropolitan at the time of their acquisition in 1933, attributed the works to Hubert.

[2] The paintings have often been compared to the seven pages of the Turin-Milan Hours illuminated manuscript attributed to the unidentified artist "Hand G", generally thought to have been Jan van Eyck.

The similarity of a Turin drawing of the crucified Christ to the figure in the New York diptych has led some art historians to conclude they were, at least, painted near the same time, during the 1420s and early 1430s.

[54] When the Turin-Milan Hours miniatures were discovered they were at first believed to have been painted before the Duke of Berry's death in 1416, an idea that was quickly rejected with the date extended to sometime in the early 1430s.

[55] Until Hans Belting and Dagmar Eichberger's 1983 Jan van Eyck als Erzähler, academics tended to focus exclusively on the diptych's dating and attribution, with little attention paid to its source influences and iconography.

[2] In 1983, Belting and Eichberger suggested a date of c. 1430 based on specific characteristics of the work: the "birds-eye view" perspective and horizon, the densely packed figures and, especially, a pictorial narrative that moves logically across the areas of the image in the Crucifixion panel.

It is thought that van Eyck left the panels unfinished with completed underdrawings, and the area was finished by workshop members or by followers after he died.

The notion of a well-educated patron, with knowledge of and appreciation for the art of earlier centuries, is reinforced by both the classical language inscriptions and the abundant detail found across all areas of the panels.

Jan van Eyck , Crucifixion and Last Judgement diptych, c. 1430–40. Oil on canvas, transferred from wood. Each 56.5 cm × 19.7 cm (22.25 in × 7.75 in); Metropolitan Museum of Art , New York
Death of Christ on the cross. Typically, a crucifixion victim's legs were broken to hasten death. According to the Gospel of John, when soldiers came to break Jesus' legs, they found him already dead. A soldier pierced his side with a lance; blood and water poured from the wound. [ 21 ]
The taunting of the condemned. At the time there were many enemies of the Temple and Jesus was seen by the Jewish hierarchy merely as the charismatic successor to John the Baptist . Although he became enough of a legitimate threat to be executed, he was ultimately viewed by the elders as just another agitating pseudo-prophet. [ 27 ]
Leaf from the Turin-Milan Hours , unknown artist, c. 1440–1450. This illustration is often attributed to Jan van Eyck or a member of his workshop.
Saint Michael the Archangel bestrides the damned, while behind him the resurrected emerge from their graves before a burning city. [ 13 ]
A personification of death spreads its skeletal wings over the fallen and damned, a number of whom can be identified by their headdress as members of the clergy.
Detail of the Christ in Majesty . This area is considered to have been painted more broadly and with less skill than the other sections of the panels, and is thus thought by some to have been painted by members of van Eyck's workshop. [ 39 ]
Petrus Christus 's Last Judgement (1452) is a much larger, though more sparse and more easily "read", near-copy of van Eyck's panel. Panofsky commented that "what [Christus] thought difficult to understand, he explained; and what he chose to retain, he rendered in simple, vernacular language". [ 52 ] Gemäldegalerie, Berlin