Christ Carrying the Cross, with the Crucifixion; The Resurrection, with the Pilgrims of Emmaus

The Artist: For a biography of Gerard David, see "Gerard David (born about 1455, died 1523)." In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–.

The Painting: Four pictures (1975.1.119A-B and 1975.1.120A-B), which now hang in frames as two pairs, were once more intimately joined. These works originally formed part of a larger polyptych, the remaining elements of which do not survive. The Annunciation, depicted in a subdued palette often referred to as demi-grisaille, would have been visible on the closed face of the structure. The Archangel Gabriel, shown at the left, delivers his message to the Virgin across the divide between panels. Gabriel’s raised hand, the dove of the Holy Spirit, hovering above the Virgin’s head, and her downcast eyes establish an arc to be traced by the viewer’s gaze. Set in a shallow niche, the figures receive minimal color, mostly applied to the flesh tones and hair. This treatment establishes a playful ambiguity for the viewer, inviting them to question whether the beings depicted are painted sculpture or living flesh and blood. A closer look confirms that, in fact, the Annunciate pair represent carved and partially polychromed statuary with gilded hair. According to Paul Philippot, the Bruges-based painter Hans Memling developed this beguiling visual strategy in his triptych for Jan Crabbe (ca. 1467-70). Iconographically, the Lehman Annunciation prefigures the opened altarpiece, as it recalls the Incarnation, the instant Christ was made flesh, making possible his sacrifice on the Cross and thus the redemption of humankind.


The Carrying of the Cross and Resurrection scenes would have been visible when the altarpiece was open. The Carrying of the Cross, located to the left of the central altarpiece section, directed the viewer’s gaze toward the imagery it framed through Christ’s burdened movement under the Cross. Christ and his tormentors along with Simon of Cyrene, who helped Jesus with the weighty load, occupy the majority of the scene, the gravity of which is somewhat tempered by the presence of the small running dog in the foreground. Beneath a sky with streaky grey clouds, the Virgin, St John the Evangelist and two other mourning women witness the Crucifixion, located, rather unusually, in the background of the picture. The Crucifixion – in particular, the good and bad thieves – quotes Robert Campin’s (ca. 1375-1444) Deposition triptych, the original of which was probably housed in Bruges by the time David set up shop in that city in 1484. This borrowing, along with that of the demi-grisaille (possibly inspired by Memling), reveals David’s intimate ties to Bruges, the city that supported him both with creative inspiration as well as with commissions. Also present in the background, somewhat removed from the action, stand two men, one of whom gestures at the group surrounding Christ while holding a halberd in his right hand.


The Resurrection panel, intended as a right wing, features a more centralized composition than its surviving counterpart. The figure of the risen Christ dominates the picture, his presence emphasized by his red robe and direct gaze. Surrounding him are the soldiers, whose task it was to protect the tomb, and who are now awakened by this miraculous event. On a road behind the rocky mound of the closed tomb, the pilgrims encounter Christ on the way to Emmaus, and further in the distance the three can be seen supping in a turreted, fanciful castle. As part of the Passion Cycle, the Carrying of the Cross and the Resurrection convey the significance of Christ’s sacrifice, expressing his torments and ultimate triumph, which were appropriate and popular scenes for contemporary Netherlandish altarpieces.


Function I: Weale (1905) and the earliest scholars to mention the Lehman pictures all argued that the panels formed the wings of a painted triptych and would have framed a Deposition or Lamentation scene since the Crucifixion is already depicted on the left wing and would not have been repeated. However, Ainsworth (1998) offered another possible reconstruction: that the Lehman pictures once flanked a carved central compartment. In Gerard David: Purity of Vision in an Age of Transition, she illustrates this suggestion with a monumental Passion retable [See Additional Images, Fig. 1 -- forthcoming], roughly contemporary with the Lehman pictures, whose inverted T-shape format corresponds to a popular type created in Brussels and Antwerp. The tall, vertical orientation of the Lehman paintings, along with their comparatively restricted, shallow landscape recall other examples of partially-carved altarpiece wings created in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Much of the relief sculpture featured in carved wooden altarpieces stacks figures atop one another in a radically foreshortened environment. By placing the main figures close to the picture plane and by minimizing the depth of field, David’s compositions establish settings that would harmonize with adjacent carvings. In such a reconstruction, the demi-grisailles teasingly introduce the media shift that takes place in the opened altarpiece.


In a somewhat simpler reconstruction, the Lehman panels could have flanked an Antwerp-carved central compartment much like the example now housed in the Centraal Museum, Utrecht [see Additional Fig. 2 -- forthcoming], whose wings, incidentally, depict the precisely the same scenes as the Lehman pictures. Undoubtedly, David was almost certainly aware of Antwerp’s growing art market by the time he created the Lehman wings since he was to join that city’s guild of St. Luke just a decade later. Like Ainsworth’s proposal, this reconstruction also establishes the spatial continuity between relief carving and shallow painted environment. In this case, however, the alignment between the wings and central compartment is more cohesive as is the continuity of narrative. The possibility remains, however, that the pictures were part of a larger, inverted T-shaped carved altarpiece, in which case they must have flanked its elevated central section [see Additional Fig. 1]. This placement too fulfills the requirement that the Annunciation panels be placed next to each other when closed, allowing the narrative to be read. At the same time, the Carrying of the Cross and Resurrection paintings must exist beside the central section since there are few narrative moments that could be represented between the two subjects. Therefore, if the panels were once part of an inverted T-shaped polyptych, they must have been to either side of the altarpiece's raised central element.


The early existence of the Lehman wings before their connection to a painting now in Philadelphia (discussed below) remains the subject of hypothetical reconstructions. It is highly likely that they were created to be part of a larger multipart altarpiece, which was dismantled before their second function, as described in the next section. Given the unusual location of the Crucifixion scene, it is probable that the panels were painted to fit precisely within an established iconographic program, although we cannot know the nature of this larger composition. Many monumental, multimedia altarpieces took years to construct, and some remained in varying stages of completion as funds were raised or details negotiated (1). A fate such as this could have befallen the Lehman paintings, which may never have left David’s workshop despite their intended function as part of an altarpiece. Until further evidence is discovered, such hypotheses remain conjectural.


Function II: While it may not be possible to reconstruct the artwork to which the Lehman paintings originally belonged (or were intended to belong), we do know that they had a second life as a triptych. In 1913 Wilhelm Valentiner named a candidate for the hypothetical triptych’s missing central panel: the Lamentation by Gerard David now in the Johnson Collection at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA) [see Additional Fig. 3 -- forthcoming]. Iconographically, the Philadelphia picture fits between the Lehman panels. Furthermore, when we consider the missing frame members as part of the overall structure, the landscape elements align more convincingly between the three paintings. However, despite this comfortable narrative fit, voices arguing against this proposed reconstruction were heard as early as 1928, notably from Robert Lehman, in whose collection the wings were then kept.


Robert Lehman’s astute observation has since been validated by the results of technical examination. A close study of the Lamentation by Paintings Conservator Mark Tucker of the PMA and Maryan Ainsworth of The Met revealed that, after already being completed as an independent work, adjustments were made to the Lamentation to make it fit with the Lehman pictures. These changes were probably made quite early in the painting’s existence, and there are indications that the alterations happened within David’s workshop. The tomb opening in the Lamentation was painted over to prevent the awkward doubling formed by linking the Philadelphia and Lehman panels, although the portal has since been uncovered by a twentieth-century restoration campaign. Similarly, the dark cliff face at the left of the Philadelphia painting was also added over already-finished trees to conform the setting to the Lehman landscape (2).


The initial composition of the Philadelphia painting – before it was joined to the Lehman wings – corresponds more closely with other Lamentations by David and his workshop. Indeed, the subject was one of the studio’s greatest hits, so to speak. Many versions of the scene were painted for sale at the Bruges market without a secure patron. If the Lehman wings were first intended for a commission that never materialized, they would have become available for repurposing. Certainly, it would not have been desirable for completed paintings to languish for long without making a profit. Since the Lehman wings needed a central panel for their iconographical program to function and because a Lamentation or Deposition scene were the clearest choices, it is probable that the workshop’s decision was straightforward. The studio was already in the business of creating Lamentations – not Depositions – at a rather high rate. A triptych with the Lehman wings and Philadelphia Lamentation would suit the Bruges market’s taste for scenes of the Lamentation, a vogue upon which David was already capitalizing.


Attribution: Long attributed to Gerard David, these panels – unique in subject matter within his extant corpus – remain generally accepted by scholars, particularly the Carrying of the Cross and Resurrection. The facial types are similar to other works by the artist, as is the attention paid to diverse modes of human expression and the sensitive rendering of hands. In their facture, the paintings are also characteristic of David and reveal his growing awareness of ways in which to streamline his creative process. This can be observed in the underdrawing, revealed through infrared reflectography (IRR). In the Carrying of the Cross panel, the underdrawing was first, and most completely set out in a dry medium, probably black chalk [see Additional Fig. 4 -- forthcoming]. As demonstrated by Ainsworth (1998), the Resurrection panel was underdrawn primarily with a liquid medium and in a way that illustrates his development towards a more effective use of this compositional stage. In Christ’s red robe, David used broad strokes of wash in the underdrawing, which he then covered with semi-transparent glazes, intending the wash to shine through the subsequent paint layers and provide the shadows in the garment’s folds (3). This effective use of initial preparatory layers can also be seen – albeit in a somewhat different form – in the execution of the exterior.

Martha Wolff (1998) describes the demi-grisailles as "less luminously painted", attributing this appearance to the involvement of a workshop member. However, David painted the exterior with the intention of creating a distinct visual effect from the interior – that of polychromed and gilded carving – and such a contrast is insufficient grounds for assuming workshop intervention. In contrast with the living flesh depicted in the Carrying of the Cross and Resurrection scenes, the figures of the Archangel Gabriel and Virgin Annunciate appear polished and hard, their hair falls in shiny, reflective coils that suggest gilded carving. To create such effects, David appears to have first worked up the figures using a grey undermodeling, which provided the greyish tone that shines through the flesh areas and served as an initial establishment of form in the draperies.

IRR reveals little underdrawing in the Annunciation [see Additional Fig. 5 -- forthcoming], although it is possible that subsequent carbon-containing paint layers obscure what drawing is present. Slight adjustments between the underdrawing and paint stages are discernible, but generally there are no significant alterations made to the composition. The reflectogram of the Annunciation contrasts sharply with the interior panels, which reveal a substantial amount of underdrawing. This difference suggests that David may have used a workshop model in the form of a drawing for the Annunciation, possibly the design produced for the Cervara polyptych (50.145.9ab), a commission with which David was likely involved just prior to undertaking the Lehman Annunciation (4). David employed the design for Gabriel’s belted and bunched robe for the small angel in the background of the Virgin and Child with Saints and Canon van der Capelle (The National Gallery, London), which is also dated to the same period. The reflectogram shows David working through the composition in paint, adjusting folds and working in an expressive, wet-in-wet technique he later covered to produce the polished effect of carved statuary that we now see. Perhaps David, confident that subsequent opaque layers would cover his sketchy design, thought through drapery details in paint rather than in his more typical underdrawing material.

Date: Despite the general challenges in reconstructing David’s corpus, the paintings are dated with confidence to the opening decade of the sixteenth century. The color palette of the Carrying of the Cross and Resurrection reflect the artist’s more developed sensibilities, after his exposure to and adaptation of the works of Dieric Bouts as well as his Bruges-based predecessors like Hans Memling and Jan van Eyck. Much of the scholarly literature corroborates an interpretation of the panels as more mature works and places them in the years between 1500 and 1510. Examining the paint handling reveals a confident and expedient manner of application with attention paid to minutiae in a manner entirely characteristic of David. They also compare favorably with other securely placed works: the close relationship between the figure of the resurrected Christ with both the Baptism Triptych and Transfiguration Triptych, dated to 1502-18 and 1500-05 respectively provides persuasive evidence for dating the Lehman panels to this creative period. The Annunciation is also similar to the Cervara Annunciation of 1506 (50.145.9ab), as noted previously.

Nenagh Hathaway 2022




Footnotes:

(1) For a discussion of carved altarpieces with customized elements, including painted wing panels, see Lynn F. Jacobs, Early Netherlandish Carved Altarpieces, 1380-1550 Medieval Tastes and Mass Marketing, Cambridge and New York, 1998, pp. 195-203 and p. 168 on completion times for large-scale commissioned altarpieces.

(2) The author would like to extend their deepest thanks to Mark Tucker, Neubauer Family Director of Conservation at the PMA for generously sharing his research and insights as well as to Christopher D. M. Atkins, Agnes and Jack Mulroney Associate Curator of European Painting and Sculpture at the PMA for supporting the author’s visit to the PMA. See Mark Tucker notes from examination report, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Paintings Conservation Department (April 9, 1997) and treatment record (May 2, 1997 and December 8, 1997).

(3) Maryan W. Ainsworth, Gerard David: Purity of Vision in an Age of Transition, New York, 1998, pp. 143-148.

(4) See Wolff’s discussion of the dating of the Lehman wings and the influence of the Cervara design. Wolff, 1998, p. 110.




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Fourth earl of Ashburnham, Ashburnham Place, England; Henry Willet, Brighton, by 1897; Rodolphe Kann, Paris (d. 1905); [Duveen Brothers, Paris and New York], by 1908. Acquired by Philip Lehman from Duveen in March 1912.