Hieronymus Bosch
NG 4744 
Christ Mocked (The Crowning with Thorns)

Lorne Campbell, 2014

Extracted from:
Lorne Campbell, The Sixteenth Century Netherlandish Paintings with French Paintings before 1600 (London: National Gallery Company and Yale University Press, 2014).

Oil on oak panel, 73.8 × 59.0 cm

Provenance

In 1882, the picture was exhibited at the Royal Academy. Reviewing the exhibition, an anonymous author stated that the owner, Charles Magniac, had ‘bought it, we believe, in Spain’ and wondered whether it had been ‘brought back from the Netherlands to Spain by one of the many Spanish or Portuguese patrons of Art…’. Charles Magniac (1826–1891) resided in London and at Colworth House, Sharnbrook, Bedfordshire, and was the eldest son of the noted collector Hollingworth Magniac (1786–1867). Charles Magniac was a Member of Parliament, an ‘authority on all questions of finance’ and first president of the London Chamber of Commerce; he died intestate.¹ He had contacts at the British embassies in Madrid and Lisbon. Sir Charles Augustus Murray (1806–1895), between 1867 and 1874 Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the King of Portugal, was married to a sister of Charles Magniac’s wife. Edmund Douglas Veitch Fane (1837–1900), who was between 1881 and 1885 secretary of the embassy at Madrid, was first cousin once removed to the husband of Frances Eliza Magniac, Charles’s sister.²

The Magniac collection was sold at Christie’s on 2–15 July 1892. NG 4744, which was lot 134, was reproduced in the sale catalogue and purchased on 4 July for £210 by ‘Crawshay’, who bought three other pictures at the same sale. He was Robert Thompson Crawshay (1855–1940), a younger brother of William Thompson Crawshay of Cyfarthfa Castle, Merthyr Tydfil, and Caversham Park in Oxfordshire. Robert lived for much of his life in Rome, where his house ‘became a noted venue for writers, musicians and artists’.³ By 1933, the picture belonged to the Galleria Sangiorgi in Rome; during the winter of 1933–4, it was exported to Switzerland. Robert Thompson Crawshay, all of whose papers were lost during the Second World War, is believed to have reorganised his collection after 1932, when his son Jack William Leslie Crawshay (1894–1950) became honorary Military Attaché at the British Embassy in Paris. Much of Robert’s collection of pictures and furniture was sent from Rome to his son in Paris⁴ and it seems possible that NG 4744 was sold at that time to the Galleria Sangiorgi. On 5 June 1934 it was in Lucerne, where it was inspected by Kenneth Clark and by Friedländer, who, by coincidence, arrived on the same day.⁵ It was then sent to London, where it was shown on 12 June 1934 to the Trustees of the National Gallery. They expressed an interest ‘but there was a disposition not to act hurriedly in the matter’. On 10 July they agreed to offer 300,000 lire for the picture; on 14 July Giorgio Sangiorgi wrote to Clark that the offer was ‘under my expectations’ but nevertheless accepted it.⁶ Clark wrote on 17 July to Friedländer to thank him for his ‘support over the picture because as you can imagine there was some opposition to the purchase of anything superficially so unattractive’.⁷ Clark confided in a letter of 18 July to H. Isherwood Kay:The Bosch was not popular but was supported by Courtauld, Witt and Gore, Duveen keeping [up] a ground bass of ‘My God! what a picture’. The result was we offered 300,000 lire, which to my great surprise has been accepted. I am very glad … I get no support from Pouncey and Davies who detest it.⁸

Clark reported to the Trustees on 9 October that the offer had been accepted; on 20 October Messrs Coutts were instructed to pay 300,000 lire from the Temple West Fund to the Galleria Sangiorgi. Late in 1934, they paid a further 3,000 lire, as the interest at 4% for three months on the purchase price. The three months covered the period between the offer in July and the payment in October.⁹ The total cost of the picture was calculated at £5,291 16s. 9d. In November 1934, Clark reported to the Trustees that the picture had been hung in Room XIX. It ‘had been visited by very many people and an unprecedented number of photographs of it had been sold’. It was on view from 3 November and was reproduced that day in The Times.¹⁰

Exhibitions

‘Old Masters’, RA 1882 (198); ‘Jheronimus Bosch’, Noordbrabants Museum, ’s‐Hertogenbosch 1967 (22); NG 1975 (136); ‘The Artist’s Eye: Richard Hamilton’, NG 1978 (5); ‘Seeing Salvation’, NG 2000 (45); ‘Encounters’, NG 2000 (catalogued under Viola); NG 2004 (not numbered).

Versions

See pp. 155–7 below.

Technical Notes

In a letter read to the Trustees on 10 July 1934, Helmut Ruhemann stated that he had ‘never seen a Bosch in such a good condition, and that it would gain greatly by cleaning’. It was cleaned immediately after it was purchased. The old varnish was removed; the shadows of Christ’s robe were ‘slightly made up’; and it was revarnished.¹¹ On 9 October 1934, it ‘had just been cleaned, but not yet repaired’.¹² On 30 October, Clark wrote to Friedländer and enclosed:a photograph of the Bosch, taken since it was cleaned. I am glad to say that it has come out exceedingly well, only the left hand side of Christ’s robe being at all damaged. The colours are marvellously brilliant and the faces have the iridescent quality of the best kind of Bosch.¹³

The paint was consolidated in 1954 and in 1967, when the picture was surface cleaned and revarnished.¹⁴

The condition is basically good. Damage is confined to old scratches in the lower part of the picture and small scattered flake losses. Some of the paint layers are not adhering well to the layers beneath, for example, the orange‐brown paint of the spiked collar of the man in the upper right corner, underpainted in dark grey or black, from which the brown is flaking (see fig. 20). In the changes in the face of the man in the lower [page 145][page 146][page 147][page 148]left corner, the paint of the alterations has not adhered well and is flaking. Some of the red lake glazes have faded and some of the copper green glazes are turning red‐brown. In places the paint is very thin and its increasing transparency allows underdrawing and pentimenti to be seen clearly, especially in lighter areas such as Christ’s robe. Drying cracks are visible in the red headdress of the figure in the lower left corner. Old retouchings on the scratches and along both joins in the panel have discoloured, as have others intended to disguise cracks and wearing, especially in the flesh paint.

The support is a panel of three boards and has been trimmed on all four sides to the edges of the painted surface; traces of barbes are visible at all four edges. The panel and the painted surface measure 73.7 cm on the left, 73.8 cm on the right, 59.1 cm at the top and 58.7 cm at the bottom. The boards are 20.5 cm, 17.6 cm and 20.9 cm wide at the top, and 20.2 cm, 17.5 cm and 21.0 cm wide at the lower edge. Dendrochronological investigation has established that the wood is Baltic oak and that the first and second boards are from the same tree. The 124 rings of the first board were formed between 1345 and 1468, the 94 rings of the second board between 1367 and 1460, and the 235 rings of the third board between 1205 and 1439.¹⁵ The panel has been thinned to 0.4 cm and a cradle of soft wood has been attached. There are seven vertical and eight horizontal members.¹⁶ On the reverse are various inscribed stamps, mostly illegible but apparently from at least four matrices. Two of the stamps were applied by the Italian Customs authorities at Chiasso, the frontier post on the railway between Milan and Lucerne, and are dated 4 December [1933] and 15 January [193]4; another bears the date 18 January.

The ground is chalk bound in glue (confirmed by FTIR and EDX analysis) and is covered by a very thin light grey priming. Infrared reflectograms (figs 1, 3) reveal underdrawing of two distinct types: one in fine black lines, applied with the point of a brush; the other in broader blackish lines, applied with larger brushes dipped in a more dilute paint. It was not, however, so liquid that it trickled down the panel. A cross‐section reveals that this second type of underdrawing is applied over the priming and consists of relatively large black particles sparsely dispersed in a medium. Both types of underdrawing may be discerned, with the naked eye, in areas where the paint has become more transparent with age (figs 4, 5).

Examination of the X‐radiograph (fig. 2) and the reflectograms shows that we have here two superimposed underdrawings and paintings.¹⁷ The first represents Saint Christopher carrying on his shoulder the naked Christ Child, who raises his right hand in benediction (figs 3, 4). A light blue sky was painted in the upper part of the panel and may be seen in small damages along the top edge (fig. 6). A paint sample shows that the blue is a mixture of azurite and lead white; the sky therefore shows as a lighter strip in the X‐radiograph. The Saint Christopher was then abandoned in an unfinished state and the panel was reused for the Christ Mocked, underdrawn in fairly broad brushstrokes and painted, with some radical alterations at the stage of painting. There is no evidence that the first underdrawing was obscured in any way before the second underdrawing was started. The two compositions are discussed below, p. 157.

Numerous changes have been made in the underdrawing for the Christ Mocked and between the underdrawing and the finished painting. In the underdrawing, Christ’s hair falls in greater profusion across both his shoulders, which are narrower. His eyes may appear to be underdrawn above the painted eyes but in fact they are not: parts of the Christ Child from the Saint Christopher underdrawing look deceptively like eyes and eyebrows for the painted Christ. In the underdrawing for Christ Mocked, Christ’s left eye was first drawn slightly to our right of its painted position, which is also underdrawn. He wears a mantle, held at the neck with a brooch. In the painting, he wears a poncho‐like robe, which is raised to reveal his hands. They are drawn crossed, with the fingers of his left hand touching the lower edge; but they are painted higher on the panel. In the underdrawing, the man in the top right corner grasps Christ’s left shoulder with his left hand, moved [page 149]in the painting to hold his staff. His right hand is not included in the underdrawing but is painted, without a reserve, on top of the green drapery of the man in the top left corner, Christ’s robe and the underdrawing of his hair. The staff held by the man in the top right corner is set with underdrawn spikes, which are not painted. In the underdrawing, the man in the lower right corner has a smaller nose; his eye is set lower; his arms are higher; and he grasps the edge of Christ’s mantle as if he would tear it off. The painted hands clutch a fold of Christ’s robe. In the underdrawing, the man in the lower left corner has a much longer, narrower staff, which rests against his right shoulder, and he raises his left hand to point at his mouth, probably to indicate that he has been spitting or shouting at Christ. (Men making similar gestures are found in images of the Ecce Homo by Schongauer and attributed to the Master of the Virgo inter Virgines.)¹⁸ His underdrawn headdress would conceal his hair and his forehead. The X‐radiograph (fig. 2) shows that the first painted contour of his chin was nearly vertical. His chin has been extended over the green drapery of the man behind. The man in the top left corner may once have held the Crown of Thorns in both hands. In the reflectograms are traces of underdrawn lines above Christ’s head that could perhaps be interpreted as an underdrawing for a foreshortened hand. This man’s features are smaller in the underdrawing: his nose is shorter, his mouth higher. The arrow through his headdress is not drawn or reserved: it is painted on top of the hat and the background and its contours are indented into the underlayers of paint. The oak leaves and acorn in the hat of the man in the top right corner are not reserved but are painted on top of the hat and the man’s forehead.

Blue occurs in the flesh of all the figures; the amount of blue increases in the two heads in the lower corners, where the blue particles are larger (figs 7, 8). Green pigment is found in the shadow below the lower lip of the man in the upper left corner: the inclusion of green in flesh paint is uncommon in Netherlandish paintings of the period. The flesh paint tends [page 150]to be very thin. The base colour is a mid‐tone, over which highlights and shadows have been added. Elsewhere, the paint may be relatively thick and it is handled with great skill and economy. The red and green glazes have been blotted with textiles (figs 9, 10). The green headdress in the top left corner has a modelled underpaint consisting of mixtures of verdigris and lead‐tin yellow, with black in the shadows and lead white in the lighter areas. This has been glazed with verdigris. The headdress is painted over some of the blue of the sky from the Saint Christopher and some of the blue has been left exposed to make highlights on the green (fig. 11). The man in the lower left corner wears a red hood: the underlayer is a mixture of vermilion, red lead and powdered glass; on top of that is a pink modelling and then a red lake glaze, again containing colourless powdered glass.¹⁹ Red lake has also been used in areas other than red drapery to create shadows but, because it has faded, this may no longer be very obvious. The azurite blue sleeve of the man in the lower left corner, which may originally have been more purple in hue, retains traces of a red lake layer, now visible only where it was applied thickly; it may have been present only in the shadows. The metal disc worn by the man in the top right corner casts a shadow rendered in red lake: it is most clearly visible where it overlaps the edge of the disc, where the paint is thick and almost white and where the red lake rides up the edge of the impasted white (fig. 12). The areas with Christ and the Crown of Thorns were finished before the figure in the top right corner.

The medium is linseed oil. No evidence has been found that heat‐bodied oil was anywhere employed. A little pine resin has been added to the oil in the red lake glaze on the headdress of the man in the lower left corner. The medium of the orange‐red underpaint of this headdress has previously [page 151]been reported as egg tempera.²⁰ It is, however, oil. Recent re‐examination of the cross‐section by ATR–FTIR imaging does not show any evidence for a proteinaceous (egg) binder. SEM–EDX analysis shows that red lead is present in addition to vermilion; the former has reacted with the binder to form lead soaps. It is known that this can alter the chemistry of the oil in a manner that can result in misidentification of an oil binder.

The paint is handled with extraordinary skill and economy. In many places, for example in the armour (fig. 13), and the hat of the man in the top right corner (fig. 14), it is worked wet‐in‐wet and then dragged or feathered with dry brushes. At the top of the Crown of Thorns, the reflected light on the curved thorn has been created by pushing a brush into the wet paint and exposing the underlayer (fig. 15). Generally, it is applied quickly and with wonderful dexterity but there are [page 152]passages of very careful detail, especially in the eyes. The catchlights, for example, in the right eye of the man in the top left corner (fig. 16) are made up of several brushstrokes: most are white; some are brushed into the wet paint of the iris and the white of the eye. In the same man’s left eyebrow (fig. 17), the paint has been very quickly and skilfully applied but the artist still contrives to suggest the directions in which the hairs grow.

Description

The background is flat grey (lead white mixed with a fine black pigment) and is perhaps intended to evoke a leaden sky. Christ is surrounded by four figures representing his tormentors. One of them holds the Crown of Thorns in his iron gauntlet and seems just about to put it onto Christ’s head. Another two, lower left and top right, hold wooden staffs which they could be about to use to force the Crown down on his head and into his scalp and skull. It is difficult to say whether the figures are standing, sitting or kneeling.

The man at the back on the left, whose eyes and hair are dark grey (figs 16, 34), is wearing a green chaperon, not unlike the headgear in Jan van Eyck’s (?self) portrait of 1433 (NG 222), and a matching green robe with bag sleeves, similar to the sleeves of the donor in Jan van Eyck’s Dresden triptych of 1437.²¹ Under the green chaperon of Bosch’s man is a reddish cap (red lake and black). It may at first seem that he has struck Christ’s head with his gauntlet; in fact, the gauntlet protects his hand from the thorns of the Crown that he is holding. One of the green scarfs of his chaperon falls over his right shoulder; the other he has wound around the bourrelet to tie up a crossbow bolt. The bolt is whitish, has white flight‐feathers bound with red threads and a bluish metal tip, triangular and ended like a chisel. Such bolts were fired at hunted animals, to hamstring them.²² Archers kept arrows stuck into their hats (compare the central archer in Bruegel’s Adoration of the Kings, NG 3556), just as one of the shepherds on the roof of the stable in Bosch’s Adoration of the Kings (Prado) has stuck a knife into his hat and just as the Pedlar (Rotterdam), attributed to Bosch, has stuck an awl or bodkin through the fabric of his cap.

The man in the top right corner has grey eyes. If he has hair, it is concealed under his large hat, which appears to be made from the fleeces of black lambs (figs 14, 18). The hat is rather like that of the central figure in the miniature of May (about 1410–15) in the ‘Très Riches Heures’ of the Duc de Berry, where it appears to be made from black feathers.²³ Tied to Bosch’s hat with a greyish lace(?) is a twig of oak from which grow five leaves and an acorn (fig. 19). Around this man’s neck is buckled a brown leather collar, studded with two rows of metal spikes (figs 20, 21). Similar collars were put on dogs, particularly hunting dogs, to protect them from attack. Compare the dogs on the reverses of the two triptychs of the Haywain (Escorial, Prado), perhaps copies after Bosch, and in the Rotterdam Pedlar attributed to Bosch. In NG 4744, the man wears under the collar a cape of blue cloth; it resembles the caped hoods that were fashionable in the late fourteenth century and were still worn in the early years of the fifteenth, notably by John the Fearless (1371–1419), Duke of Burgundy.²⁴ The metal disc that decorates the man’s cape in NG 4744 is a roundel used in armour, but here, it seems, completely without function (fig. 22). A similar roundel, there made of yellow metal, decorates the shoulder of the man haranguing Simon of Cyrene in the Escorial Christ carrying the Cross, attributed to Bosch. In NG 4744, the man wears, beneath the cape, a red robe. The stick that he holds in his left hand is covered in (birch?) bark; the split in the wood is reddish and vermilion is present in the paint here. His thumbnail has a blue highlight, probably because it is reflecting the blue cape.

Christ has orange‐brown hair, painted over a much greyer underlayer, and a beard of the same brown colour, mixed from vermilion, black and white, with some red lake in the shadowed areas. His eyes are dark grey (fig. 23). His garment is white and no seams are visible. Some areas of the white are tinted with a little red lake and black, possibly to make the [page 153][page 154]robe look very slightly transparent. (These areas should not be confused with the discoloured retouchings, which are also pinkish.) The robe is definitely intended to be white, for there are no indications that red lakes have been present and faded from visibility. The structure of the robe is not well defined but it seems to be a sort of poncho, and the man in the lower right corner appears to be lifting its hem and revealing Christ’s hands. The Crown of Thorns is made from two branches, twisted together, from two different plants. One branch has thorns with straight contours and is grey with yellowish highlights (fig. 24). The other branch has curved thorns, like a rose, and is grey and pink; but parts of the thorns are almost pure red lake (fig. 15). One of the thorns is embedded in Christ’s scalp (fig. 25). The Crown appears to be too large to fit easily around Christ’s head.

The man in the lower left corner has white hair, a white beard and a white eyebrow; his eye is dark grey and his mouth hangs open to reveal what could be broken teeth (fig. 7); his hood is red. In the lower left corner are a white six‐pointed star, emitting, in the form of broken lines, rays of light (fig. 26); [page 155]a white crescent; and a white shape distantly resembling a Latin cross, all of its extremities being differently shaped (fig. 27). These whitish areas are partially transparent and may be intended to represent embroidered ornament. Hanging from the corners of the hood are small spheres made from whitish (glass?) beads (fig. 28). The highlights are pure white. The star and crescent refer to the Orient: possibly, though not necessarily, to the Turks and the Ottoman Empire; perhaps to Palestine, then under Ottoman control. His robe is purplish blue: blue, again with traces of a red lake glaze and with some thicker red lake passages in the shadow below the cape and in the lower left corner of the picture. This man holds a staff in his left hand and with his right hand touches Christ’s fingers.

The man in the lower right corner has grey eyes (fig. 8). His hair is concealed under the purplish cap (red lake and black) that he wears beneath his blackish headgear. This is apparently a chaperon with two long scarfs. Under his red robe is a black garment with a standing collar and long sleeves, visible above his wrists. His upper garment is painted with red lake, applied as a glaze over a modelled pink underlayer. He has unbuttoned the end of his left sleeve – the empty buttonholes are painted in black on top of the red lake (fig. 9) – and has done so possibly to free his wrist and hand. The buttonholes are unusually prominent and, as they were laborious to make, an indication of prosperity. He seems to have seized the hem of Christ’s robe, to have lifted it to expose his hands and to be preparing to rip the cloth. His Semitic facial type, as well as his clothes, suggests that he is to be identified as a Jew.

The last two figures are dressed in garments that recall the clothes worn by Jews in paintings by the van Eycks and their followers: the patriarchs of the Ghent Altarpiece;²⁵ and the Jew reading from a scroll inscribed in Hebrew letters in the Fountain of Life (Prado), by a follower of Jan van Eyck.²⁶

Iconography

Christ, arrayed in a white robe, is about to be crowned with thorns.²⁷ The white robe has always been white: no traces of faded red pigments have been found. According to the Vulgate translation of Saint Luke’s Gospel (23:11), Herod had Christ dressed in a white garment, indutum veste alba, before sending him back to Pilate. This is a mistranslation of the Greek, more accurately rendered in the Authorised Version as ‘a gorgeous robe’. Saint Luke was the only Evangelist who did not mention the Crown of Thorns. Matthew (27:28–29) and Mark (15:17) stated that Christ was arrayed in scarlet or purple and then crowned with thorns; while John (19:2) recounted that he was crowned with thorns and (then) dressed in a purple robe. Earlier, according to Matthew (26:67–68), Mark (14:65) and Luke (22:64), it had been the Jews in the house of Caiaphas who had derided Christ as a prophet. According to Mark and Luke, his head was then covered; according to Matthew and Mark, the Jews spat upon him. John (18:22) mentioned only that, in the house of Annas, ‘one of the officers … struck Jesus with the palm of his hand’.

Bosch has not illustrated one scene from one Gospel but has referred to all four Gospels and the accounts of various indignities inflicted on Christ by the Jews and the Romans. The four men around him represent all his tormentors. Christ is dressed in white, perhaps because of the mistranslated Vulgate text of Luke 23:11, but surely also to stress his innocence and to give him tonal prominence over his colourful enemies. He may look smaller but all five faces are on the same scale. The four tormentors seem larger because their heads are broader and because they wear elaborate hats.

All four wear clothes that would have seemed old‐fashioned or exotic at the time, around 1510, when the picture was probably painted. Three wear attributes that must be significant. The arrow with the chisel‐shaped tip is designed not to kill but to hamstring or disable; a hunted animal so wounded would have been at the mercy of the hounds. The spiked dog collar worn by the man in the upper right corner may refer to the hounds, while the oak leaves and acorn in his hat may have held associations with the oak trees revered in pagan rituals.²⁸ The star and crescent on the headgear of the man in the lower left corner make a connection with the Orient; but the cross‐like emblem below has not been explained. The fourth man appears to be identified by his clothes and by his facial type as a Jew. As Christ was insulted and tormented first by the Jews and afterwards by Roman soldiers, it is perhaps likely that the two men in the lower corners are Jews, and that the two men in the upper corners, whose pieces of armour seem to mark them out as soldiers, are Romans.²⁹

Attribution

The painting was exhibited in 1882 as by ‘Holbein(?)’ and sold in 1892 as by an artist of the ‘Early Flemish School’. Reviewing the 1882 exhibition, two anonymous commentators rejected the attribution to Holbein³⁰ and one proposed that it was by ‘a Spanish painter of the beginning of the sixteenth century working under strong Flemish influences; unless indeed, which is more probable, it was brought back from the Netherlands to Spain by one of the many Spanish or Portuguese patrons of Art’.³¹ Conway in 1921 classified NG 4744 as an imitation of the Escorial Crowning with Thorns (fig. 29). He stated that the London picture was ‘certainly’ not by Bosch but that it was a repetition of an original design by him.³² Friedländer in his certificate of 1934³³ and his publication of 1937 recognised it as a ‘distinguished original by Bosch’; his attribution has been accepted by most subsequent authors.³⁴ Klein in 2001 and Verougstraete and Van Schoute in 2001 and 2006 have demonstrated that the Escorial Crowning with Thorns, previously believed to be a masterpiece by Bosch, was in fact by an imitator working after 1516, the year of Bosch’s death; and that it is a pastiche based on NG 4744.³⁵ The figure of Christ has been reversed. The head of the man in the upper right corner has also been reversed; the arrow through his hat, which here has a point, has been taken from the man in the upper left corner of NG 4744. His face, again reversed, has been reused for the man with the horn behind the man with the arrow in the Escorial picture. The armoured fist has been reversed and attached to the man in the lower right corner of the Escorial panel; the man in the lower left corner of NG 4744 has become Pilate in the Escorial painting. The novelties there are the leg and foot belonging to the man with [page 156][page 157]the arrow and planted on the left of Christ; and the figure above this leg, whose face is not unlike the self portrait of Bosch, known only from copies.

Another Crowning with Thorns, known from versions in Antwerp, Bern, Philadelphia and elsewhere, was similarly a pastiche, based on NG 4744 and the Escorial painting;³⁶ while a mutilated Christ before Pilate on the reverses of the wings of a triptych of the Adoration of the Kings at Upton House (fig. 30) is compounded from elements taken from the Escorial Crowning with Thorns and other paintings by and in the style of Bosch.³⁷

In NG 4744, Christ is remarkably similar to God the Father in the left wing of the Garden of Earthly Delights, where a similar technique of flesh painting is employed (fig. 31). The extraordinary skills of Bosch as a painter, designer and colourist are well demonstrated in the Christ Mocked and the Garden of Earthly Delights; it seems obvious that they are by the same artist.

The underdrawing for the Christ Mocked may also be attributed to Bosch, who has departed from it in radical ways at the stage of painting. It is bold, and confidently and quickly executed. The underdrawn Saint Christopher beneath is rather different in style and technique but equally rapid and vigorous. It is probably also by Bosch, who, when he decided to reuse the panel, may have made a deliberate choice of broader brushes and a more dilute paint for the second underdrawing. He was working directly on top of the underdrawn Saint Christopher – there is no trace in the paint samples of any intermediary layer – and would have wished to make as clear as possible the distinction between the two superimposed underdrawings.

The Saint Christopher would have resembled the Rotterdam Saint Christopher, on which there is a possibly genuine signature and where the Child is clothed, and the Saint Christopher in the Musée Dobrée at Nantes (fig. 32), where the Child is naked, as in the underdrawing of NG 4744. Both these paintings reverse the London composition. The Nantes picture, which is probably not by Bosch himself, is the right wing of a triptych. The left wing is a Saint Anthony (Norfolk, Virginia, Chrysler Museum of Art). On the reverses, now much damaged, appears an angel(?) holding two shields with unidentified coats of arms.³⁸

Date

It is difficult to suggest dates for any of Bosch’s paintings except the Prado Adoration of the Kings, which, on heraldic evidence, may be placed around 1494. The versions of NG 4744 seem [page 158]all to have been painted after the death of Bosch and cannot be used to establish a more precise dating. NG 4744 is perhaps closer in style and technique to the Garden of Earthly Delights than to the Adoration of the Kings: which may indicate a date around 1510.³⁹

NG 4744 is the only Crowning with Thorns now known that can be attributed to Bosch. It is tempting, given its Iberian provenance, to associate it with a panel of the Crowning mentioned in sixteenth‐century sources as the work of Bosch. This was a painting that had belonged to Damião de Góis, who testified before the Inquisition in 1572 that it was worth a great deal, because of the ‘perfection, originality and invention of the work, done by Hieronymus Bosch’.⁴⁰ It was among the objects that Damião had donated in 1560 to the parish church of Our Lady of Várzea at Alenquer, his birthplace, north of Lisbon. As Damião seems to have visited the Low Countries for the first time in 1523, he cannot have purchased his picture from Bosch himself.⁴¹ Even if NG 4744 were Damião’s painting, that would not help to date it.

Bosch’s Intentions

The half‐length narrative compositions of Rogier van der Weyden and Hugo van der Goes may have inspired Bosch to experiment with such ideas. It cannot have been easy to imagine a half‐length Crowning with Thorns and it seems obvious that Bosch has expended an enormous amount of effort on designing NG 4744.⁴²

Though the figures are all on the same scale, they are layered into three intersecting planes: the two men in the upper corners are furthest from us; Christ is in front of them; and he is behind the two men in the lower corners. There are some ambiguities, since the hand in the iron gauntlet is in front of Christ’s hair although the Crown of Thorns held in the gauntlet is behind Christ’s head. In the top half of the picture, there are few overlaps. The gauntlet does not intrude across Christ’s forehead and Christ is clearly separated from the face and left hand of the man in the top right corner, who nevertheless embraces him by laying his right hand on Christ’s right shoulder. Most of the contours in the top section of the painting make straight lines or simple curves. In the lower part, however, the contours are very much more complex and agitated.

The tear duct of Christ’s right eye is on the central vertical axis: which helps to give his head dominance. The four men look at him while he stares out of the painting and seems to disregard them. The central horizontal axis goes through the eye of the man in the lower left corner and the left hand of the man in the upper right corner and indicates the point at which his index finger and thumb intersect with his staff. The mathematical centre of the picture lies in Christ’s robe, just above the point where the hands of the man in the lower right corner are grasping it and perhaps trying to tear it from him. The composition can be partially resolved into regular triangles. The arrow, for instance, is the hypotenuse of a triangle formed by the top left corner of the panel; its angles are 90°, 60° and 30°. The 30° angle between the arrow and the top edge echoes the 30° angles between the two pairs of thorns at the top of the Crown. Another triangle of 90°, 60° and 30° is the pink area in the lower right corner, bounded by the black scarf. The arms of the man in the lower right corner are on an axis 45° above the lower edge and parallel to one of the main diagonals of the support. The other main diagonal is echoed in the iron gauntlet, again on an axis 45° from the top edge. Both axes form the hypotenuses of right‐angled isosceles triangles. The two staves would meet at an angle of 60°.

The severe geometry of the composition gives it stability, while the tangential relationships between Christ’s contours and those of the two men in the upper corners seem to indicate a gentle consideration that is completely out of keeping with the subject and their actions. The Crown of Thorns itself makes the shape of a halo; and the points of the thorns do not intrude across Christ – or they are tangent to the contour of his hair. The thorn shapes are echoed in the spikes of the collar but, rather unexpectedly, they are contrasted with the arrow without a point.

The colours, too, are carefully balanced around the figure of Christ. The strong green of the man in the top left corner is echoed in the oak leaves of the top right corner and complemented by the pinks and reds that dominate the lower section of the picture. The purplish‐blue sleeve in the lower left corner echoes the duller, darker blue of the cape worn by the man in the upper right corner.

The balance of shapes and colours is perhaps appropriate for this representation of the moment before the Crown of Thorns is placed upon Christ’s head. In the Crown, the combination of dull grey‐greens, pinks and reds unites and closes the top of the composition. Every observer is free to decide whether the facial expressions of the four men are cruel or anxious. The man in the lower left corner, for example, is very unlike the fiend into which he is transformed in the Ghent Christ carrying the Cross, where he is the man between Saint Veronica and Christ (fig. 33).⁴³ In NG 4744, Bosch has deliberately muted the violence, for, in the underdrawn composition, the four men treat Christ with much greater aggression and brutality. The finished painting is more affecting and more interesting because of its restraint and balance. Christ is about to be crowned with thorns; the arrow and dog collar imply that he will be helplessly disabled (hamstrung) and mauled (by dogs) before being killed; the execution will proceed in a disciplined and orderly way.

I would like to thank Xavier Bray, Elisabeth, Lady Crawshay, Roger Van Schoute, Hélène Verougstraete and Karen Watts for help in the preparation of this entry.

Notes

Infrared reflectography was carried out using OSIRIS (InGaAs digital sensor). For further details see p. 18, note 23.

22. Josef Alm, European Crossbows, A Survey, translated by H. Bartlett Wells, ed. G.M. Wilson (Royal Armouries Monographs, 3), Leeds 1994, pp. 42 (fig. 27 no. 6), 80, etc. A similar arrow with a chisel‐like point is seen in the miniature, painted in about 1412–15 by associates of the Boucicaut [page 160][page 161]Master and representing Charles VI of France speaking to Pierre Salmon, in the ‘Dialogues’ of Pierre Salmon, Geneva, Bibliothèque de Genève, MS fr. 165, fol. 4. The arrow is held, tip upwards, by the unidentified man dressed in black in the centre of the group; its significance has not been explained. See Elizabeth Morrison and Anne D. Hedeman, Imagining the Past in France, History in Manuscript Painting 1250–1500 (exh. cat., The J. Paul Getty Museum), Los Angeles 2010, pp. 224–6. Another such arrow is held, tip downwards, by the posturing youth with a crossbow in the lower right corner of a tapestry of the Crucifixion, woven between 1501 and 1518 and preserved at La Chaise‐Dieu (abbatiale Saint‐Robert: reproduced in the exh. cat., Paris 2010–11, p. 187). Once again, its significance has not been explained. (Back to text.)