The Annunciation to Mary - The Birth of Christ

These altar wings date from 1452 and carry the signature “petrus xpi”, made up of Latin and Greek letters. The artist became a citizen of Bruges on 6 July, 1444, and was repeatedly mentioned in documents between 1454 and 1472. Petrus Christus, who built on the achievements of Jan van Eyck, Robert Campin and Rogier van der Weyden, achieved his distinct position in Netherlandish painting because of his new combination of the figure and space. These two altar wings were part of a retable whose central section presumably showed a scene from Christ’s Passion. The left-hand wing is divided into two parts. The upper half shows the Annunciation to Mary. Under this the Birth of Christ is to be seen, and Mary and Joseph are worshipping the child. Salome is kneeling in the foreground on the right; she doubted the virgin birth and was converted by a miracle. The composition shows clear analogies with Robert Campin’s Birth of Christ in Dijon. The right-hand wing shows the Last Judgement, in which Christ is enthroned above the rainbow as judge of the world. On earth, the Archangel Michael is fighting against death and the Devil. This is an imaginative copy of a work on the same theme attributed to Jan van Eyck in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.| Prestel Museum Guides – Gemäldegalerie Berlin, 2017