Descent from the Cross

Peter Paul Rubens, c. 1612 Cathedral of Our Lady, Antwerp, Belgium By Caroline Shaw

In the sombre evening light of Good Friday, the crowd has departed from Golgotha, and daylight is fading. Only those few who have not abandoned Our Lord are here now. A group of eight figures works silently and with great concentration, gently lowering Our Lord’s body from the Cross. Our eye is first draw to the graceful, limpid figure of Jesus, whose lifeless form illuminates the whole scene with a pale grey light. Then our gaze travels down to the beautiful figure of St John, in vivid red, the colour of martyrdom. He is fully alive, strong and sure as he braces himself to carry the weight of Our Lord in his outstretched arms. Above St John is Joseph of Arimathea, who provided the tomb in which Jesus was laid, and opposite him is the bearded figure of Nicodemus, the wealthy Pharisee who brought myrrh and aloes to embalm Jesus’ body. Above them, two muscular workers lower the blood-stained winding sheet and gently, wordlessly, let Our Lord’s body slip from their arms.

Rubens’ ‘Descent from the Cross’ is considered to be one of the greatest paintings of the 17th century.

Our eye travels along this sinuous, tightly-packed group, down to the left, where Our Lady stands. Her face is as deathly pale as her Son’s, her arm is outstretched, reaching up to touch His lifeless arm. Her inner grief is etched onto her pale tear-stained face, but she stands ready to receive her beloved Son in her arms for the last time. Below her is Mary Cleophas, who gathers up her skirt with one hand, and reaches out to grasp the winding-sheet with the other, gazing in anguish up at her Lord and Saviour with tears streaming down her face. Next to her, St Mary Magdalene’s long pale golden hair shines in the darkness, and her solemn gaze contemplates with awe and wholehearted love, the image of her Crucified Lord, whose blood-stained foot rests gently on her shoulder. She takes it tenderly in both hands, recalling at once the moment when she washed Our Lord’s feet with her tears, and dried them with her hair.

This vast, magnificent altarpiece fills the space at the right of the main altar in the great Cathedral of Our Lady at Antwerp. It is one of a trio of huge altarpieces painted for the Cathedral by Rubens, which are all still in situ. Standing at the entrance to the Cathedral and gazing along the great expanse of the nave, one can recognize immediately what is depicted in this altarpiece: Rubens’ clarity, his dramatic vision, his powerful yet simple compositions, are easily visible even to the worshippers sitting at the very back of the church.

Rubens was born in Antwerp in 1577, a few years after the period of nearly 20 years of iconoclastic attacks by Calvinists that disfigured almost all the Catholic churches in the city. Thousands of paintings, sculptures and liturgical items were set upon and violently smashed, burned and destroyed. The Calvinists attacked images of Our Lady particularly virulently: “As if on cue, they all fall furiously upon the Madonna, stab it with swords and daggers and tear off its head,” wrote a horrified onlooker.

The citizens of Antwerp had a particular devotion to Our Lady and, once peace and the Catholic faith had been re-established under Spanish rule, they quickly sought to restore her images. Rubens painted a magnificent, light-filled ‘Assumption’ for the High Altar of the Cathedral, emphasising her triumph, while the pale yet steadfast image of Our Lady in his ‘Descent’ underlines her importance as co-Redemptrix at the foot of the Cross.

Rubens may well have drawn upon the writings of St Ambrose for his depiction of Our Lady: “during her Son’s many afflictions, she alone stood confident in her faith… disciplined and modest”. This is a passage that was very much in keeping with the new post-Tridentine understanding of Our Lady’s role in Christ’s Passion. From the Middle Ages onwards, the Church had often meditated upon the Virgin’s tragic, agonizing impotence during the Passion and descent from the Cross, and artists routinely painted the figure of Our Lady as slightly separated from the main body of the action, fainting and overwhelmed with grief.

This idea of Mary’s weakness was, however, vigorously countered by the Church after the Reformation. Far from depicting her as a weak and broken figure, it was her steadfastness and stoicism that was now to be emphasized. A few years before Rubens painted this altarpiece, a Jesuit named Fr Jacob Gretser wrote: “those who paint the blessed Virgin fallen to the ground, robbed of her strength and senses… are not acting in correspondence with the truth, nor in accordance with the dignity of such a great mother.” Rubens’ altarpiece was the first, and certainly the most influential, of a new generation of works that sought to emphasize Our Lady’s admirable strength in the face of her all-consuming suffering.

The altarpiece was commissioned in 1611 by the Guild of Arquebusiers, whose patron saint was St Christopher, the ‘Christ-bearer’. The guild members asked Rubens for an altarpiece celebrating St Christopher, but according to the new rules laid down by the Counter- Reformation Church, it was forbidden to depict images of saints in the central panels of altarpieces: only scenes from the life of Our Lord were considered worthy. Rubens responded to their request in two ways. He painted an impressively large St Christopher on the back panel of the altarpiece; and here, in this magnificent image of the Deposition, he has painted eight ‘Christ-bearers’. In this scene, the figures most central to the life of Our Lord – His Mother, St John, St Mary Magdalene – are the founders of the primordial Church. They take into their arms the body of their Lord – the original Corpus Christi. This image is thus a potent reminder and re-affirmation to all who worship in the Cathedral, of the real presence of Our Lord, the body of Christ, which is received by all the faithful, every day, in the holy Eucharist.