The Artist: Despite his significance among the Northern European followers of Caravaggio, there is much uncertainty about Hendrick ter Brugghen’s biography.[1] The artist was most likely born in The Hague in 1588, the son of a civil servant; according to early writers, he received his artistic training from Abraham Bloemaert in Utrecht. By the summer of 1614, Ter Brugghen was in Milan, but scholars have recently questioned the long-held assumption that he spent as much as a decade in Italy. Furthermore, no Italian-period paintings by Ter Brugghen have been convincingly identified. However many years it may have lasted, Ter Brugghen’s Italian sojourn had a decisive impact on his art, as revealed by the paintings he made after his return to the Netherlands by the fall of 1614. These display the artist’s original synthesis of impressions taken from such diverse painters as Caravaggio, Rubens, and Domenico Fetti. The Met’s painting displays several of the characteristics of Ter Brugghen’s maturity, such as substantial but unidealized figures, vivid evocation of emotional affect, and dramatic illumination. Ter Brugghen’s production in Utrecht ranged from devotional pictures to raucous scenes of prostitution and music-making. Over the course of a relatively brief career, Ter Brugghen became the leading figure in a group of painters known to art historians as the Utrecht Caravaggisti. Archival records and inventories indicate that Ter Brugghen was prosperous and his work sought out by prominent and aristocratic collectors. He died in 1629, at the age of forty-two, in the midst of an outbreak of plague in Utrecht.

The Picture: Ter Brugghen provides a graphic depiction of Christ’s suffering on the cross. His emaciated body, the knees wrenched to the right, has acquired a greenish pallor, and bright gouts of blood stream from the wounds in his hands, feet, and side. The cross itself is a piece of rough carpentry, only partially planed, and a still life of bones and pieces of wood rests at its base. The Virgin Mary and John the Evangelist flank the cross, with Christ’s knees overlapping John’s cloak. Hands clasped and eyes directed upward, they serve as surrogates for the viewer’s own beholding of Christ’s tormented body. A twilit sky punctuated by stylized stars provides the background. (Ter Brugghen painted the sky partly with the fugitive blue pigment smalt, which now reads as a grayish brown.)

For most commentators, the most striking feature of the work is its apparent archaism.[2] By the time Ter Brugghen painted this image, Peter Paul Rubens had transformed Northern European depictions of Christ’s Passion with a pair of monumental altarpieces, dated 1610–11 and 1612–14, that he painted for Antwerp churches. These images represented the Passion as a narrative, emphasizing dynamic movement across the picture plane, with an asymmetrical disposition of monumental figures informed by the study of classical sculpture and the live model. In doing so, Rubens mapped onto the venerable format of the triptych altarpiece the lessons of Roman Baroque painting and particularly Caravaggio.[3] His pictorial formulae had a lasting impact on Northern painters, such as Rembrandt’s early depictions of the same subjects, now in Munich.

By contrast, Ter Brugghen’s Crucifixion scene appears at first glance to ignore the innovations of his contemporaries, drawing on the more distant source of late Gothic painting in the German-speaking lands, perhaps mediated through printed sources. With its static, frontal composition, Ter Brugghen’s painting provides an icon of Christ’s suffering and the grief of his closest followers. The starry sky contributes a further archaizing element, although one grounded in a close reading of the biblical narrative (one writer has argued that it represents Ter Brugghen’s scientifically accurate depiction of a solar eclipse; see Nickel 2007). Scholars have identified various works as Ter Brugghen’s putative source, including a Dutch altarpiece from about 1400 (see Kloek 1988), but the most frequent and compelling suggestion is the work of Matthias Grünewald (ca.1470–1528), whose surviving depictions of the Crucifixion likewise emphasize the degradation of Christ’s lacerated and discolored body, as well as the stylized gestures of his mourners. More recently, Natasha Seaman has argued that “the sheer number of viable possibilities suggests that no one of them is a direct source. It seems Ter Brugghen chose to reimagine—not recreate—the archetypal form of the subject as it had frequently appeared in the preceding century.”[4] At the same time, as Walter Liedtke noted, features such as the drapery represent an accommodation to seventeenth-century taste, while the naturalism with which Ter Brugghen depicted the Virgin and Saint John attests to his debt to Caravaggio.

Function and Variants: Beyond the question of archaism, writing on The Met’s picture has focused on its possible function as the altarpiece of a “hidden church,” devoted to clandestine Catholic worship in the Dutch Republic, where public celebration of the Mass was forbidden. Utrecht was home to many prominent Catholics, and Ter Brugghen, although apparently a Protestant himself, clearly counted on their patronage. The Met’s own Allegory of the Catholic Faith by Johannes Vermeer (32.100.18), offers one visualization of a hidden church, displaying a curtained-off space in a domestic interior, with an altar table arrayed for the Mass in front of a painted depiction of the Crucifixion. Recent research, however, has complicated the notion that altarpieces for hidden churches were either aesthetically retrograde or reduced in scale.[5] Other of Ter Brugghen’s Catholic devotional pictures, such as the Saint Sebastian Tended by Saint Irene (Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin), are among his most pictorially innovative, dispensing entirely with the archaism of The Met’s Crucifixion.

Complicating the question of the original function and context of The Met’s picture is a small constellation of related compositions and copies. Among these variants, two are particularly salient for the possible meaning and function of the New York picture. The first is a canvas reproducing, at a larger scale and with slight variations, the composition of The Met’s painting, but with the lower bodies of the Virgin and John the Evangelist cut off by the frame. Located in a private collection in Turin, this work reportedly comes from a chapel in the Piemontese town of Casale Monferrato and was until recently known to scholars only through photographs.[6] In an effort to establish its relationship to The Met's picture, the Turin variant was brought to New York in 2017, where it was the subject of extensive examination. This study supported the conclusion that both the New York and Turin pictures are autograph works by Ter Brugghen; x-radiographs further revealed that, despite repeated assertions in the literature, the Turin picture has not been cut down and bears traces of candle burns in the lower section, indicating a possible function as an altarpiece.

The chronological relationship between both pictures remains uncertain. However, one clue may be the smaller scale and heightened use of archaic features in The Met's picture, particularly the wrenched body of Christ (by contrast, his appearance in the Turin picture is relatively naturalistic), and the starry background (the sky in the Turin picture is instead streaked with clouds). In the most extended discussion of the Turin picture to date, Wayne Franits (2017) has argued that The Met’s version is an autograph reduction of a large-scale altarpiece. If the Turin picture did function as an altarpiece for a clandestine Catholic congregation in Utrecht, the New York version may have been made as variant intended for the private devotions of a worshipper with a particular affinity for Northern art of the early sixteenth century. If we accept that The Met's picture may have been painted for a private patron, it reopens the possibility that it is the same picture as the “Christ on the Cross by van der Brugghe” listed in the estate of the art dealer Johannes de Renialme in Amsterdam in 1657, countering Walter Liedtke’s objection (2007) that “a hidden church in Utrecht . . . probably would not have disposed of such a powerful work by one of the city’s most celebrated masters.”

The Italian provenance of the Turin picture has raised for some writers the possibility that it was painted during Ter Brugghen’s poorly documented Italian period and thus was not a hidden church altarpiece at all. Franits, however, has strongly contested this supposition on stylistic grounds. Moreover, Marten Jan Bok notes an intriguing connection between Utrecht and Casale Monferrato, the Piemontese town where the Turin picture first resurfaced. This was the birthplace of Octaviano del Ponte (died 1645), who spent his career in Utrecht as a painter and pawnbroker and could potentially have been the conduit through whom the picture traveled to Italy.[8] In any case, the now only partially legible date on the New York picture places it in the 1620s, well after Ter Brugghen’s return to the Netherlands.

The second variant of The Met's picture with a bearing on its interpretation is a relatively crude copy, now in Utrecht’s Centraal Museum. This painting repeats Ter Brugghen’s composition, but without the starry sky and with the figures of the Virgin and John spaced slightly further out on either side of the cross. A greater intervention, however, is the appearance of a family in early-sixteenth-century dress, kneeling in prayer at the foot of the cross. Robert Schillemans (1993) argued that the Utrecht picture played a role in the efforts of Adriaen Gerritsz Ploos to establish his relationship to the noble family of Ploos van Amstel, and was a copy or replacement for an actual early-sixteenth-century memorial that may have inspired Ter Brugghen’s Crucifixion as well.[7] Perhaps more likely is that Ter Brugghen’s painting, with its archaizing features, provided the prototype for an ersatz family memorial in support of Ploos’s spurious claims to nobility.

The various copies after Ter Brugghen’s Crucifixion all attest to the striking emotional impact of his fusion of late medieval prototypes with the intensely affective visual culture of the Counter Reformation that he experienced in Italy. Whatever its original audience, the work certainly functioned as a devotional picture later in its history. By the late nineteenth century, Ter Brugghen’s Crucifixion was hanging in Christ Church, South Hackney, where it would later be rediscovered following the Blitz.

Adam Eaker 2020

[1] This account is largely derived from Slatkes and Franits, 2007.
[2] For summary of literature, see Liedtke 2007.
[3] For Rubens’s reinvention of the Netherlandish triptych, see Colin Eisler, “Rubens’ Uses of the Northern Past: The Michiels Triptych and Its Sources,” Bulletin des Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique 16 (1967), pp. 43–76, and Lynn F. Jacobs, Opening Doors: The Early Netherlandish Triptych Reinterpreted, University Park, Pa., 2011, pp. 257–80.
[4] Natasha T. Seaman, The Religious Paintings of Hendrick Ter Brugghen: Reinventing Christian Painting after the Reformation in Utrecht, Farnham, 2012, p. 83.
[5] Xander van Eck, Clandestine Splendor: Paintings for the Catholic Church in the Dutch Republic, Studies in Netherlandish Art and Cultural History, vol. 9, Zwolle, 2008.
[6] On the basis of these photographs, Walter Liedtke (2007, p. 115) declared the Italian picture “certainly later than the New York canvas and by another hand.”
[7] Personal communication to Walter Liedtke, August 10, 2005.

Inscription: Signed, dated, and inscribed: (lower center) HTB [monogram] fecit / 162[ ]; (on cross) IN RI

Christ Church, South Hackney, London (about 1898?–1956; sold for £75 to Foxell); Nigel Foxell, Oxford (1956; sale, Sotheby's, London, November 28, 1956, no. 115, to Sperling for The Met)

Dayton Art Institute. "Hendrick Terbrugghen in America," October 15–November 28, 1965, no. 9.

Baltimore Museum of Art. "Hendrick Terbrugghen in America," December 19, 1965–January 30, 1966, no. 9.

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. "Masterpieces of Painting in The Metropolitan Museum of Art," September 16–November 1, 1970, unnumbered cat. (p. 38).

Washington. National Gallery of Art. "Gods, Saints & Heroes: Dutch Painting in the Age of Rembrandt," November 2, 1980–January 4, 1981, no. 11.

Detroit Institute of Arts. "Gods, Saints & Heroes: Dutch Painting in the Age of Rembrandt," February 16–April 19, 1981, no. 11.

Amsterdam. Rijksmuseum. "God en de Goden: Verhalen uit de bijbelse en klassieke oudheid door Rembrandt en zijn tijdgenoten," May 18–July 19, 1981, no. 11.

Utrecht. Centraal Museum. "Nieuw Licht op de Gouden Eeuw: Hendrick ter Brugghen en tijdgenoten," November 13, 1986–January 12, 1987, no. 21.

Braunschweig. Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum. "Holländische Malerei in neuem Licht: Hendrick ter Brugghen und seine Zeitgenossen," February 12–April 12, 1987, no. 21.

Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. "Masters of Light: Dutch Painters in Utrecht During the Golden Age," September 13–November 30, 1997, no. 8.

Baltimore. Walters Art Gallery. "Masters of Light: Dutch Painters in Utrecht During the Golden Age," January 11–April 5, 1998, no. 8.

London. National Gallery. "Masters of Light: Dutch Painters in Utrecht During the Golden Age," May 6–August 2, 1998, no. 8.

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "The Age of Rembrandt: Dutch Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art," September 18, 2007–January 6, 2008, no catalogue.

Posthumous inventory of Johannes de Renialme. June 20–21, 1657, no. 137 [Gemeentearchief, Amsterdam, NAA 1915, filmnr. 2129, ff.663–685; published in A. Bredius, "Künstler-Inventare," The Hague, vol. 1, 1915, pp. 230, 237, where date of inventory is given as June 27; Getty no. N-2213], as "Een Christus aen 't cruys, van Van der Brugge," valued at 150 guilders, possibly this picture.

"£27,000 for a Corot: Sale Total £224,000 at Sotheby's." Times (November 29, 1956), p. 12, calls it "the most interesting item" in the sale, and "a new discovery"; relates it to Grünewald and Mantegna; states that Nigel Foxell bought it at a furniture shop for under £100.

"A Record Price at an Outstanding Picture Sale." Illustrated London News (December 8, 1956), p. 974, ill.

Weltkunst 36 (December 15, 1956), p. 19, ill.

Horst Gerson. Het Vaderland (February 16, 1957) [see Ref. Nicolson 1958], thinks that the Utrecht version [see Notes] is later than the MMA painting, but also by Ter Brugghen, and that the portraits may be after a lost Scorel.

James J. Rorimer and Dudley T. Easby Jr. "Review of the Year 1956–1957." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 16 (October 1957), pp. 38, 40, ill. p. 43.

Horst Gerson. "Herwaardering van H. ter Bruggen." Het Vaderland (February 23, 1957), ill. [see Ref. Nicolson 1958].

Claus Virch. "The Crucifixion by Hendrick Terbrugghen." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 16 (April 1958), pp. 217–26, ill. (detail, and in color on cover), dates it 1626 on the evidence of the partly legible inscription and on the basis of style; relates it to works by other artists.

Benedict Nicolson. Hendrick Terbrugghen. The Hague, 1958, pp. 6, 8, 22, 41, 45, 79–82, no. A49, pls. 53, 54, 55c, 56, 57 (overall and details), dates it about 1624–26, relating the head of Christ to that in the "Incredulity of Saint Thomas" (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam); believes it is probably the work included in the Renialme inventory of 1657 [see Ref.]; considers that the Utrecht variant was probably commissioned from an unknown artist by a member of the Ploos family sometime after 1630; believes that Grünewald was a major influence.

Benedict Nicolson. "De Heilige Hieronymus van Hendrick Terbrugghen." Bulletin Museum Boymans-van Beuningen 9, no. 3 (1958), pp. 88, 90, fig. 4 (detail), dates it about 1623–26.

S[amson]. Lane Faison Jr. A Guide to the Art Museums of New England. New York, 1958, p. 140.

Alfred Frankfurter. "Midas on Parnassus." Art News Annual 28 (1959), p. 62, ill. (color).

H[orst]. Gerson. "Review of Nicolson 1958." Kunstchronik 12 (November 1959), p. 317, dates it about 1625.

K. E. Maison. Art Themes and Variations. New York, 1960, p. 215, fig. 61, reproduces it alongside an engraving and a woodcut, both of the Crucifixion, by Dürer.

Benedict Nicolson. "Second Thoughts about Terbrugghen." Burlington Magazine 102 (November 1960), p. 470 n. 22.

J. Richard Judson. "Review of Nicolson 1958." Art Bulletin 43 (December 1961), p. 347, believes that it was made as an altarpiece, possibly as a replacement for an earlier work, and that it may have a source in German or Dutch fifteenth-century panel painting.

H[orst]. Gerson in Kindlers Malerei Lexikon. Vol. 1, Zürich, 1964, pp. 563–64.

Wolfgang Stechow. "Terbrugghen in America." Art News 64 (October 1965), pp. 49–50, fig. 1 (color), suggests that the figure of Christ may have been inspired by "some piece of Gothic sculpture placed high above the worshipper".

Leonard J. Slatkes. Dirck van Baburen (c. 1595–1624): A Dutch Painter in Utrecht and Rome. Utrecht, 1965, pp. 52–53 n. 27, p. 91, suggests that the motif of Saint John's clasped hands is taken from Baburen's "Capture of Christ" (Galleria Borghese, Rome).

Leonard J. Slatkes in Hendrick Terbrugghen in America. Exh. cat., Dayton Art Institute. Dayton, 1965, pp. 28–30, no. 9, ill.

Wolfgang Stechow in Hendrick Terbrugghen in America. Exh. cat., Dayton Art Institute. Dayton, 1965, pp. 7–9.

Jakob Rosenberg and Seymour Slive in Dutch Art and Architecture: 1600 to 1800. Baltimore, 1966, p. 24.

Arthur von Schneider. I seguaci del Caravaggio nei Paesi Bassi. Milan, 1966, unpaginated.

Connoisseur 172 (November 1969), p. CCXXX, ill. (color).

Edith A. Standen in Masterpieces of Painting in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Exh. cat., Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. New York, [1970], p. 38, ill. (color).

P. J. J. van Thiel. "De aanbidding der koningen en ander vroeg werk van Hendrick ter Brugghen." Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 19 (December 1971), p. 109.

J. M. Nash. The Age of Rembrandt and Vermeer. New York, 1972, unpaginated section, fig. 23.

Eduard Plietzsch. Holländische und flämische Maler des XVII. Jahrh. 2nd ed. Leipzig, 1972, pp. 143, 145.

Jakob Rosenberg and Seymour Slive in Dutch Art and Architecture: 1600 to 1800. rev. ed. Harmondsworth, England, 1972, pp. 38–39.

Richard E. Spear. "Baroque Paintings from Ligozzi to Hogarth." Apollo 103 (February 1976), p. 106.

Benedict Nicolson. The International Caravaggesque Movement. Oxford, 1979, p. 98 [2nd ed., rev. and enl. by Luisa Vertova, "Caravaggism in Europe," Turin, 1989, vol. 1, p. 190].

Rüdiger Klessmann in Jan Lievens: ein Maler im Schatten Rembrandts. Exh. cat., Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum. Braunschweig, 1979, p. 54, under no. 9, notes its influence on Jan Lievens.

Howard Hibbard. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1980, pp. 299, 308, fig. 537 (color).

Christopher Brown in Gods, Saints & Heroes: Dutch Painting in the Age of Rembrandt. Exh. cat., National Gallery of Art. Washington, 1980, pp. 104–5, no. 11, ill. [Dutch ed., "God en de Goden: Verhalen uit de bijbelse en klassieke oudheid door Rembrandt en zijn tijdgenoten," Amsterdam, 1981].

Albert Blankert in Gods, Saints & Heroes: Dutch Painting in the Age of Rembrandt. Exh. cat., National Gallery of Art. Washington, 1980, p. 15 [Dutch ed., "God en de Goden: Verhalen uit de bijbelse en klassieke oudheid door Rembrandt en zijn tijdgenoten," Amsterdam, 1981; reprinted in "Selected Writings. . . ," Zwolle, 2004, pp. 102–3, fig. 85 (color)].

Walther Bernt. Die Niederländischen Maler und Zeichner des 17. Jahrhunderts. Vol. 3, 4th, rev. ed. Munich, 1980, no. 1249, ill.

Erik de Jong [sic for E. de Jongh?]. Een schilderij centraal: De Slapende Mars van Hendrick ter Brugghen. Exh. cat., Centraal Museum. Utrecht, 1980, pp. 10, 31 n. 52, believes it is probably the work cited in the Renialme inventory of 1657 [see Ref.].

Michael Kitson. "'Gods, Saints and Heroes' at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam." Burlington Magazine 123 (July 1981), p. 444, fig. 70, comments that the artist "seems to draw on parts of the Italian tradition stretching back to Masaccio's Pisa Polyptych".

Peter Hecht. "Review of Exh. Washington and tour 1980–81." Simiolus 12, no. 2/3 (1981–82), p. 185.

Peter C. Sutton. A Guide to Dutch Art in America. Grand Rapids, Mich., 1986, p. 180, fig. 255.

Leonard J. Slatkes in Nieuw Licht op de Gouden Eeuw: Hendrick ter Brugghen en tijdgenoten. Exh. cat., Centraal Museum. Utrecht, 1986, pp. 46, 50, 76, 103–4, 110, 129–30, 133–36, no. 21, ill. [German ed., "Holländische Malerei in neuem Licht: Hendrick ter Brugghen und seine Zeitgenossen," Braunschweig].

Peter Hecht and Ger Luijten. "Nederland verzamelt oude meesters. Tien jaar aankopen en achtergronden." Kunstschrift/Openbaar Kunstbezit 6 (1986), p. 194, ill.

Albert Blankert in Nieuw Licht op de Gouden Eeuw: Hendrick ter Brugghen en tijdgenoten. Exh. cat., Centraal Museum. Utrecht, 1986, p. 28 [German ed., "Holländische Malerei in neuem Licht: Hendrick ter Brugghen und seine Zeitgenossen," Braunschweig].

Marten Jan Bok in Nieuw Licht op de Gouden Eeuw: Hendrick ter Brugghen en tijdgenoten. Exh. cat., Centraal Museum. Utrecht, 1986, p. 71 [German ed., "Holländische Malerei in neuem Licht: Hendrick ter Brugghen und seine Zeitgenossen," Braunschweig], lists the Ter Brugghen Crucifixion from the Renialme collection, possibly this picture.

Michael Kitson. "Brunswick, Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum, Hendrick ter Brugghen and his Contemporaries." Burlington Magazine 129 (February 1987), p. 137.

"Torino: Un Ter Bruggen romano." Giornale dell'arte no. 50 (November 1987), p. 61, discusses another version of this work in a Turin collection.

J. A. L. de Meyere. "Hendrick ter Brugghen en tijdgenoten (I): Nieuw Licht op de Gouden Eeuw." Antiek 6 (January 1987), p. 350, fig. 16.

Bernhard Schnackenburg. "Höllandische Malerei in neuem Licht: Hendrick ter Brugghen und seine Zeitgenossen." Kunstchronik 40 (April 1987), p. 172.

Maestri fiamminghi ed olandesi del XVI e XVII secolo. Exh. cat., Caretto Gallerie. Turin, 1987, p. 42, ill. on foldout, mistakenly states that it is dated 1620; attributes the Turin version to Ter Brugghen and dates it about 1612–13.

Volker Bauermeister. "Review of Exh. Braunschweig 1987." Das Kunstwerk 40 (June 1987), p. 72.

Wouter Th. Kloek. "The Caravaggisti and the Netherlandish Tradition." Hendrick ter Brugghen und die Nachfolger Caravaggios in Holland. Ed. Rüdiger Klessmann. Braunschweig, 1988, p. 51, compares it with Dutch altarpiece of about 1400 from the church of Saint Walburgis, Zutphen (Rijksmuseum Het Catharijneconvent, Utrecht, on loan to Henriëtte Polak Museum, Zutphen).

Christopher Brown. "The London 'Jacob and Laban' and ter Brugghen's Italian Sources." Hendrick ter Brugghen und die Nachfolger Caravaggios in Holland. Ed. Rüdiger Klessmann. Braunschweig, 1988, pp. 93, 97 nn. 19, 23, fig. 124.

Jan Bialostocki. "Der schwarze und der farbige Raum: Caravaggio und die Niederländer." Hendrick ter Brugghen und die Nachfolger Caravaggios in Holland. Ed. Rüdiger Klessmann. Braunschweig, 1988, p. 11.

Christopher Wright. Dutch Paintings in the Seventeenth Century: Images of a Golden Age in British Collections. Exh. cat., Birmingham City Museums and Art Gallery. London, 1989, p. 47.

Walter Liedtke. "Dutch Paintings in America: The Collectors and Their Ideals." Great Dutch Paintings from America. Exh. cat., Mauritshuis, The Hague. Zwolle, The Netherlands, 1990, p. 55.

Albert Blankert. A Newly Discovered Painting by Hendrick ter Brugghen. Zwolle, The Netherlands, 1991, pp. 15, 20, 24, 39 n. 6, p. 40 n. 18, figs. 5, 10 (overall and detail).

R[obert]. Schillemans. "Schilderijen in Noordnederlandse katholieke kerken uit de eerste helft van de 17e eeuw." De zeventiende eeuw 8, no. 1 (1992), p. 42.

Maria Giulia Aurigemma. "Gherardo, Enrico, Teodoro ed altri simili." L'asino iconoclasta: Seicento olandese, Proposte di lettura, problemi di metodo e di interpretazione. Ed. Maria Giulia Aurigemma and Giovanna Capitelli. Sant'Oreste (Rome), 1993, pp. 50–52, fig. 8.

Robert Schillemans. "Over Hendrick ter Brugghen's 'Kruisigingen' en de aanspraak van Adriaen Ploos op een adellijke afkomst." De zeventiende eeuw 9, no. 2 (1993), pp. 137–51, fig. 1, discusses the different versions of the composition, calling the Utrecht picture a faithful copy after an earlier work, the MMA picture by Ter Brugghen, the Turin picture attributed to Ter Brugghen, and another version in the St. Clemenskerk, Nes, a copy after the MMA work from the workshop of Ter Brugghen.

Seymour Slive. Dutch Painting 1600–1800. New Haven, 1995, p. 20.

Albert Blankert in "Fiamenghi che vanno e vengono non li si puol dar regola", Paesi Bassi e Italia fra Cinquecento e Seicento: pittura, storia e cultura degli emblemi. Sant'Oreste (Rome), 1995, p. 134, fig. 27.

Katharine Baetjer. European Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art by Artists Born Before 1865: A Summary Catalogue. New York, 1995, p. 304, ill.

Leonard J. Slatkes. "Bringing Ter Brugghen and Barburen [sic] up-to-date." Bulletin du Musée National de Varsovie 37, no. 3–4 (1996), pp. 217–18.

A[lbert]. Blankert in Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: die bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker. Vol. 14, Munich, 1996, pp. 504–5.

Marten Jan Bok. "Laying Claims to Nobility in the Dutch Republic: Epitaphs, True and False." Simiolus 24, no. 2/3 (1996), pp. 210, 212, fig. 4.

Leonard J. Slatkes in Masters of Light: Dutch Painters in Utrecht During the Golden Age. Exh. cat., Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. Baltimore, 1997, pp. 151–55, 411, no. 8, ill. (color).

Joaneath A. Spicer in Masters of Light: Dutch Painters in Utrecht During the Golden Age. Exh. cat., Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. Baltimore, 1997, pp. 20, 394 n. 20.

Christopher Brown. Utrecht Painters of the Dutch Golden Age. Exh. cat., Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. London, 1997, p. 33.

Ben Olde Meierink and Angelique Bakker in Masters of Light: Dutch Painters in Utrecht During the Golden Age. Exh. cat., Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. Baltimore, 1997, p. 79.

Ghislain Kieft in La pittura nei Paesi Bassi. Ed. Bert W. Meijer. Milan, 1997, vol. 2, p. 410, fig. 379 (color).

Dennis P. Weller. Sinners & Saints, Darkness and Light: Caravaggio and His Dutch and Flemish Followers. Exh. cat., North Carolina Museum of Art. Raleigh, 1998, p. 213, no. 3, ill.

Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. "Utrecht painters in Baltimore." Apollo 142 (April 1998), p. 52.

Liesbeth M. Helmus Centraal Museum. Schilderkunst tot 1850. Utrecht, 1999, vol. 2, p. 769.

Joël Cornette in Joël Cornette and Alain Mérot. Histoire artistique de l'Europe. Vol. [4], Le XVIIe siècle. Paris, 1999, p. 51, ill. p. 50 (color).

Jean-Pierre Cuzin in Joël Cornette and Alain Mérot. Histoire artistique de l'Europe. Vol. [4], Le XVIIe siècle. Paris, 1999, p. 227.

Larry Silver. "'Caravaggism's Missing Link, or what ter Brugghen brought home from Rome'." Pantheon 58 (2000), p. 191.

Richard Beresford and Peter Raissis. The James Fairfax Collection of Old Master Paintings, Drawings, and Prints. Exh. cat., Art Gallery of New South Wales. Sydney, 2003, p. 42.

Liesbeth M. Helmus in Caravaggio e l'Europa: Il movimento caravaggesco internazionale da Caravaggio a Mattia Preti. Exh. cat., Palazzo Reale. Milan, 2005, p. 97 n. 52.

Stichting Victor IV: "The Crucifixion with Members of the Family of Adriaen Willemsz. Ploos" after Hendrick ter Brugghen, 1624? Exh. cat., Centraal Museum. Utrecht, 2005, unpaginated [see Ref. Slatkes and Franits 2007].

Pierre Rosenberg. Only in America: One Hundred Paintings in American Museums Unmatched in European Collections. Milan, 2006, pp. 15, 82, ill.

Natasha Therese Seaman. "Archaism and the Critique of Caravaggio in the Religious Paintings of Hendrick ter Brugghen." PhD diss., Boston University, 2006, vol. 1, pp. vi, 6–9, 15, 26, 62, 64, 116, 124, 129, 132–58, 165–66, 171–72, 184, 213; vol. 2, fig. 9, assumes that it is the version owned by Renialme; discusses the depiction of blood.

Esmée Quodbach. "The Age of Rembrandt: Dutch Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 65 (Summer 2007), pp. 50, 52–53, 61, fig. 60 (color).

Walter Liedtke. Dutch Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 2007, vol. 1, pp. x–xi, 109–18, no. 25, colorpl. 25, fig. 22 (color detail); vol. 2, p. 893, dates it about 1624–25; believes it is "possible, but improbable" that the picture was owned by Renialme.

Helmut Nickel. "The Sun, the Moon, and an Eclipse: Observations on 'The Crucifixion with the Virgin and Saint John,' by Hendrick Ter Brugghen." Metropolitan Museum Journal 42 (2007), pp. 121–24, fig. 1, colorpl. 4, finds the brown sky with its pin-prick stars very close to that of a total solar eclipse; notes that there was a total eclipse in Rome in the early afternoon of October 12, 1605, that Ter Brugghen must have witnessed, and an annular eclipse in the Netherlands on May 21, 1621, "which would surely have reinforced the artist's memory of his Roman experience"; observes that the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke each describe a three-hour period of darkness starting at noon, while Christ was on the cross.

Nigel Foxell. "The £75 Masterpiece." Art News 106 (October 2007), p. 204, discusses his purchase of the picture.

Walter Liedtke. "Resurrection of a Crucifixion." Art News 106 (October 2007), pp. 202–5, ill. (color).

Leonard J. Slatkes and Wayne Franits. The Paintings of Hendrick ter Brugghen, 1588–1619: Catalogue Raisonné. Amsterdam, 2007, pp. 31, 38 n. 28, 40–43, 65, 71, 103–10 n. 26, pp. 111–12, 114, 127, 134–35, 167, 193, 222, 241, 246, 268, 280, no. A19, pl. 18, call it "likely, but by no means certain" that it is the work owned by Renialme.

Jean-Pierre Cuzin. Figures de la réalité: Caravagesques français, Georges de La Tour, les frères Le Nain . . . [Paris], 2010, p. 52, reprints Cuzin 1999.

Kathryn Calley Galitz. The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Masterpiece Paintings. New York, 2016, p. 284, no. 217, ill. pp. 214, 284 (color).

Wayne Franits. "Hendrick ter Brugghen’s Paintings of the Crucifixion in New York and Turin and the Problem of His Early Chronology." Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art 9 (Winter 2017), fig. 1 (color) [DOI: 10.5092/jhna.2017.9.1.3], argues that this version is an autograph reduction of a large-scale altarpiece.

Susan Moore. "Art Market." Apollo 191 (May 2020), p. 47.