Gerard David, 'Christ Nailed to the Cross', about 1481

Christ is stretched on the cross on which he is to be crucified. At his feet two soldiers, one bracing a booted foot against a rock, haul on ropes to pull his legs straight as another hammers an iron nail into his feet. A fourth knocks a nail into his right hand. Another man digs a hole for the base of the Cross. This depiction of torture was once the central panel of a triptych (a painting in three parts). The outer wings, Pilate and the Chief Priests and The Virgin Mary, John the Evangelist and the Three Maries, are now owned by the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp.

Christ’s pale skin and nakedness emphasise his vulnerability, and David has painted his body with great care: the thin covering of flesh on his distorted chest, the blue veins and taut sinews in his arms and the contorted fingers of his left hand all convey his terrible pain. His face is red, and he seems to be gritting his teeth as he looks at us to invite our compassion. Lying on the ground is Christ’s coat – in the Bible, the soldiers cast lots for it (John 18: 24) – and a dog sniffs at a skull. According to the Gospels, Christ was crucified at Golgotha, ‘the place of the skull’. Traditionally the skull was thought to be that of Adam, the first man; Christ was seen as the second Adam who came to redeem humanity’s sins through his sacrifice.

David borrowed and adapted motifs from other artists, in particular Jan van Eyck, assembling them like a jigsaw to make a new whole. He did not invent this composition but adapted it from an earlier image. The nailing of Christ to the Cross was not described in the Bible, but was found in devotional literature and was a popular subject for illuminated manuscripts. Miniatures in French and Netherlandish manuscripts include several of the figures in this scene, perhaps reflecting a lost original. The group of horsemen who come into view in the upper left, the skull and the dog sniffing at it may derive (possibly via a drawing) from an image of the Crucifixion associated with Jan van Eyck (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York).

David had a particular ability to humanise and individualise sacred subjects, and technical investigations show how he achieved this here. Infrared reflectograms reveal many small changes between the underdrawing and the final painted version. The most significant are those to Christ’s face. In the underdrawing he appears to have stared upwards, while in the painting he looks to his right, and out at us, calling on us to respond. There are also small marks on the robes of various figures, possibly colour notes: what seems to be a ‘b’ on the trousers of the digging man and the blue doublet of the soldier at the lower right probably stand for blauw (‘blue’).