Christ on the Cross

Christ’s emaciated dead body hangs on a cross with quatrefoil ends depicting the symbols of the Evangelists: the lion (St Mark), the eagle (St John) and the angel (St Matthew). The Evangelist symbol of the ox (St Luke) is missing from the lower quatrefoil. The corpus and the crossbars have remained intact for almost five centuries. Statues of the Virgin and St John probably accompanied the cross, and this group (a Calvary) would have been placed on a rood beam, high up under a church vault between the sanctuary and the nave. The style of both corpus and cross displays parallels with that of a Calvary in the parish church of Beek (Belgian Limburg). The maker of this Calvary is known as ‘the Master of Beek’, who would have been working in the circle of the Master of Elsloo.