Triptych of the Descent from the Cross

This small triptych, signed "Marcelius / koffermans / fecit" in gold letters, is a classic sequential narrative running from left to right: Christ carrying the cross, Christ nailed to the cross, and the descent from the cross. Marcellus Coffermans, the first neo-Gothic painter to come from the Netherlands, based the triptych (as he usually did) on 15th- and early 16th-century northern European art. The most easily recognizable is Van der Weyden’s The Descent from the Cross, which can be seen here in a vertical composition. The other two scenes are based on engravings by Schongauer.