The Descent from the Cross

Panel painted in oil, commissioned by the crossbowmen’s guild of Leuven for their chapel. Ten life-size figures are packed into a shallow stage, close to a relief, which throws everything onto gestures and faces: the fainting Virgin falls in exactly the pose of Christ’s body. Philip II brought it to Spain in the sixteenth century, and it is now one of the paintings people come to the Prado to see.