The triptych, cleaned in 1974–5, is in very good condition.

The centre panel is made up of four boards laid vertically and vertical in grain; the two outer boards are not perfectly rectangular. The wood is oak from the Baltic region. The board on the left is 25.2 cm wide at its upper edge; its 165 [page 323][page 324] [page 325][page 326] growth rings were formed between 1283 and 1447. The second board, which is from the same tree, is 30.7 cm wide at the upper edge; its 197 growth rings were formed between 1265 and 1461. The third board is 28.3 cm wide at the upper edge; its 159 growth rings were formed between 1287 and 1445. The fourth board is 23.3 cm wide at its upper edge; its 155 growth rings were formed between 1315 and 1469.⁶ The top edge is 10 mm thick but the panel is considerably thicker at its centre. The unpainted edges survive on all four sides; the reverse is concealed by canvas stuck to the back of the panel. The left wing is made up of two boards laid vertically, vertical in grain and joined 27.6 cm from the left at the top edge. The right wing is made up of two boards laid vertically, vertical in grain and joined 25.3 cm from the left of the top edge. The wings are 6 mm thick at the edges but considerably thicker at their centres. The unpainted edges survive on all four sides of both faces of both wings.

There are chalk grounds. Infra‐red photographs and reflectograms reveal much underdrawing, in a liquid medium on the interior of the triptych, in a dry material on the exterior (figs 6–8). No unusual pigments have been identified. The medium is linseed oil, with some egg tempera, probably in the underlayers.⁷

The underdrawing is extensive and detailed for the main figures and for prominent buildings but a few areas do not seem to have much or any underdrawing: in the left wing, for example, the landscape and the building on the right appear not to be underdrawn; in the centre panel, the tower [page 327] [page 328] of the New Church in Delft is not underdrawn but is painted over a drawing of a tree(?). The corpse of Judas, the tree on which he has hanged himself and the dog near the left edge are not drawn or reserved. A different technique and style of underdrawing are found in the figure of the woman immediately below the cross of the good thief (fig. 7), where the lines are in a dry material over the first laying in of the landscape. They are broken, usually straight and always quickly drawn and details are schematically rendered: the hands are outlined but individual fingers are not defined. The exterior is less carefully underdrawn, in a dry material, but the style is comparable to that of the principal figures in the centre panel.

Only the most significant changes can be listed here. In the left wing, the buildings on the left have been much altered from the underdrawing. The head of the soldier wearing a helmet has been redrawn several times and his hands are not drawn but are painted over the balustrade. A left hand resting on Christ’s right shoulder is drawn but not painted. In the centre panel, the donor’s head has been enlarged and raised; his hands, drawn on a diagonal axis, have been painted on a horizontal axis and lengthened. The woman directly below the good thief is drawn and painted on top of the cross and the landscape. In the foreground (fig. 6), the head of the boy carrying the bow has been much altered: it is reserved to our right of its painted position and seems not to have been seen in profile. The hillock and tree‐stump in the lower right corner are painted on top of the horse, itself much changed from its underdrawing. A vertical halberd on the left of Christ’s cross has been painted and then suppressed and replaced by the slanting halberd now visible. On the exterior there are numerous changes, particularly in the hands and draperies (fig. 8).

The narrative begins in the top right corner of the centre panel, where Christ prays in the garden of Gethsemane and contemplates a chalice placed high on the cliff above him. He is asking, ‘Let this cup pass from me’. The apostles Peter, James the Great and John are asleep nearby.⁸ Judas approaches to lead the soldiers who are to arrest Christ. In the background on the left is the corpse of Judas, who has hanged himself on a tree.⁹ In the left wing is the praetorium, decorated with statues of a prophet(?) and a longbowman shooting, though he has lost his bow. Pilate stands in the doorway and the figures at the window are presumably Caiaphas and another of the chief priests.¹⁰ Christ has been crowned with thorns and scourged; the purple robe in which he was presented to the people has been taken from him and he is wearing his own clothes, a blue tunic which must be the seamless tunic for which the soldiers were to cast lots. He is being led away to be crucified.¹¹ In the foreground, the cross is being prepared; the weeping woman and her children have not been identified. In the background, the two thieves, stripped and bound, are being taken to Calvary.

In the top left section of the centre panel, the procession to Calvary reappears. The thieves, now dressed in shirts, do not look at all like the thieves in the left wing. Christ is carrying his cross and behind him ride Pilate and the two chief priests(?). In the distance, the tower is that of the New Church in Delft, shown as it was after it was completed in 1496 and before it was altered after a fire in 1536 (fig. 9).¹² The procession to Calvary is watched from a distance by the Virgin and Saint John, accompanied by three women. The woman on our right, who reappears in the same clothes below Christ’s [page 329] [page 330] cross and, in the right wing, supporting Christ’s feet, is presumably the Magdalen. In the foreground, Christ hangs from the cross and is derided by two soldiers, one of whom carries a halberd and uses his fingers to stretch his mouth into a grimace.¹³ The woman praying beneath the cross is apparently the Magdalen. On Christ’s right is the good thief, Dismas; on his left is the bad thief, Gesmas.¹⁴ Their arms are nailed to their crosses through their wrists rather than through the palms of their hands; their feet are not nailed but are tied to the crosses. Below the good thief are Saint John, the fainting Virgin and four other grieving women, one of whom, on our left, covers her face with a cloth and another of whom, directly behind the Virgin, was added at a late stage. Various women present at the Crucifixion are mentioned in the Gospels but it is not possible to identify them here. In the lower left corner is the donor, dressed in the white habit of a Premonstratensian canon.¹⁵ In the centre are two exotically dressed children, one of whom holds a bow; it seems to be they who, slightly differently dressed but still with the bow, reappear to watch Christ carrying the cross. The bow may conceivably refer in some way to the bow lost from the statue of the archer in the left wing. In the lower right corner of the centre panel is Pilate, accompanied by the two chief priests(?): their clothes are much the same as those they wear in the left wing and the upper left section of the centre panel. The grandly dressed man in profile, who appears to address Pilate, may be the centurion who took charge of the executions and who believed in Christ’s divinity.¹⁶ Behind Pilate are two soldiers, one of whom carries a spear and is perhaps Longinus, who pierced Christ’s side with his spear.¹⁷

In the right wing, the body of Christ is brought down from the cross, now seen in a rather different setting. The man supporting the upper part of Christ’s body is probably Joseph of Arimathea; the man who is supporting his feet and who wears a fringed tunic, a cap and a hood, may be Nicodemus, a Pharisee.¹⁸ The woman with him is apparently the Magdalen and is in any case the same woman who kneels at the foot of Christ’s cross in the centre panel. Saint John and the Virgin reappear in the foreground, surrounded by four women. If they are the same four women who surround the Virgin in the foreground of the centre panel, they are wearing different clothes. The older woman on our right carries a small pail, the significance of which has not been explained.

On the reverses of the wings are representations in grisaille of the Virgin and Child; Saint Augustine of Hippo, wearing bishop’s robes and holding his emblem, a heart; Saint Peter, holding his emblem, a key; and the Magdalen, holding her emblem, a covered pot.

In 1893, and possibly also in 1846–59, the triptych was attributed to Schongauer.¹⁹ It seems subsequently to have been attributed to Wohlgemut.²⁰ Friedländer in 1913 created the ‘Master of Delft’ and attributed the triptych to him;²¹ his attribution has been universally accepted.²²

A second, larger triptych of the Crucifixion (Cologne)²³ is in the same style and is closely related to NG 2922, though it cannot be classed as a version. The donor’s coat of arms appears to be that of the older branch of the Kievit family of Rotterdam: he is perhaps Pieter Jansz. Kievit, a member of the Town Council of Rotterdam from 1504 until his death in 1542.²⁴ A version of the Cologne triptych, made for different donors, is dated 1528 and is in the chapel of St Edmund Hall, Oxford.²⁵ It appears to be badly damaged and much repainted but seems always to have been of poor quality and cannot be attributed to the Master himself.

The Master of Delft was an eclectic painter and in NG 2922 has borrowed extensively from works by other artists. In the left wing, he seems to have adapted the figures of Christ, the man behind him and the man in profile on the extreme right from Schongauer’s engraving of the Ecce Homo (Lehrs 25; see p. 320) and the head of the man wearing a helmet from Schongauer’s Christ carrying the Cross with Saint Veronica (Lehrs 26; see p. 320). From Schongauer’s Way to Calvary (Lehrs 9; fig. 10) he has taken several figures in his centre panel: Christ carrying the cross, the two men on either side of him and the horseman below the good thief. All these figures have been reversed. In the distance, the Virgin, Saint John and the Holy Women are similar to the corresponding group in the engraving, while the head of the woman in the centre of the foreground is similar to that of Saint Veronica in Schongauer’s Christ carrying the Cross with Saint Veronica. The woman carrying a basket on her head, beneath the hanged body of Judas, may be a free reversed copy after one of the figures in the background of Schongauer’s Peasants going to Market (Lehrs 90). In the left wing, the two thieves and the horseman preceding them through the gate are taken, directly or indirectly, from Memling’s Passion of Christ (Turin), painted in about 1470.²⁶ In the centre panel, the ambitious pose of the crucified bad thief comes ultimately from van der Weyden and from Memling’s altarpiece of the Passion (Lübeck), dated 1491.²⁷ In the lower right corner, Pilate and his horse, the man on his right and the two soldiers behind him are based on the horsemen in the lower right corner of the Martyrdom of Saints Crispin and Crispinian (Warsaw), plausibly identified as the centre panel of an altarpiece painted in Brussels in 1490–4 by Aert van den Bossche (fig. 11).²⁸ The Master may also have known the work of contemporary artists in Haarlem and Leyden. The woman in the lower right corner of the left wing is at least reminiscent of Saint Elizabeth in the lower right corner of the Holy Kindred (Amsterdam), by Geertgen or a follower,²⁹ while her hat is very like that of the woman behind the Virgin in the Lamentation (Leyden) by Cornelis Engebrechtsz.³⁰ The figure of the crucified bad thief, though deriving from van der Weyden and Memling, may also be taken from this Lamentation. The Magdalen at the foot of Christ’s cross is similar in facial type, and in the pose of the upper part of her body, to the corresponding figure in the Crucifixion (Leyden) by Engebrechtsz.³¹ Finally there are so many affinities between NG 2922 and prints by Lucas van Leyden that there appears to be some connection between the Master and Lucas. The child in the lower left corner of the left wing is like the child in Lucas’s Flagellation of 1509 (B. 61); the man bending over the cross could be a free reversed copy after the man on the right of Lucas’s Mocking of Christ, also dated 1509 (B. 60); the trumpeter with his long, curved trumpet recalls the trumpeters in various prints by Lucas. The children in the foreground of the centre panel are reminiscent of the children in the Expulsion of Hagar (B. 17) and the 1509 Christ before Annas (B. 59) by Lucas, while the back view of the swaggering soldier in the background on the left, between Pilate and Christ, looks very like several of the soldiers in Lucas’s prints.

It is interesting that, in NG 2922, the Master seems to borrow only from prints produced by Lucas before or in 1509. He continued, however, to take an interest in Lucas’s prints, for the Ecce Homo in the background of his Cologne triptych of the Crucifixion is based on Lucas’s great engraving of 1510.

In the open London triptych, Christ is represented five times. The Virgin, Saint John, the Magdalen, Pilate and his companions are all shown three times and are easily recognised by their clothes, which are depicted with a fair degree of consistency. In the case of Pilate and his companions, the consistency is far from absolute. Other recurring figures, however, change in a disconcerting way. The two thieves, for example, are represented three times but their hair and clothes alter on each occasion; the Holy Women in the centre panel differ from their counterparts in the right wing. The landscapes around the cross of Christ in the centre panel and [page 332] in the right wing are not particularly similar. Such inconsistencies may occur partly because the Master was copying from other works of art; but he seems to have thought it unimportant to identify the minor protagonists. He could have used inscriptions to label the figures. Though he does include two such inscriptions, they appear to be meaningless and purely decorative.