ANTON VAN DYCK (1599-1641)

The Lamentation over the Dead Christ (1616/18)

Oil on canvas 207 x 137 cm

Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

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This moving painting highlights the extraordinary skill and confidence of the young van Dyck, who painted this brilliant Lamentation at the age of seventeen. Christ has just been taken down from the cross, his wounds still bleeding. A muscular giant, his body is limp and contorted, the ungainliness of his pose poignant. Below him are the hammer and the nails of his crucifixion, the  mocking crown of thorns and the placard proclaiming “Jesus of Nazareth King of the Jews”

As if the pathos of Christ’s corpse was insufficient in itself to command attention, van Dyck has centred the composition on it. It is framed by the white shroud and the colourful costumes of the Virgin Mary, the auburn-maned Mary Magdalen and the young Saint John the Evangelist. If the mourners’ gestures and facial expressions are somewhat rhetorical, the image is nonetheless moving.

The colour, the physiognomics and the smooth handling of the mourner’s costumes indicate that van Dyck was already responsive to Rubens. The painting shows the sensibility of the artist that throughout his career gave proof of being a dedicated and faithful son of the Catholic Church. The raw power of Christ’s twisted, bleeding and tortured body is far from the grace that would be typical of van Dyck’s later works.