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The Crucifixion with Moses, David, St Paul and St John the Baptist
Unknown - Enlarge image
The Crucifixion with Moses, David, St Paul and St John the Baptist
- Object:
Painting
- Place of origin:
Great Britain, UK (made)
- Date:
ca. 1600 (made)
- Artist/Maker:
Unknown (production)
- Materials and Techniques:
oil on canvas
- Museum number:
P.1-1938
- Gallery location:
British Galleries, room 58b, case 2
Object Type
This painting, with its complex allegories showing quotations and parallels between the Old and the New Testament, is based on a print that the engraver Jerome Wierix derived from a composition by Crispin van den Broeck. Such allegories were frequently the subject of prints and paintings in the late 16th century. Both Wierix and Broeck were well-known in their day for their numerous prints with Counter-Reformation themes that were commissioned and disseminated by the Jesuits throughout Europe as propaganda.
Subjects Depicted
In this painting the main figure of the Crucified Christ is accompanied by the Brazen Serpent on a pole. According to the Old Testament, this was carried as a kind of standard before Moses and prefigures the Crucifixion. Other texts and images from the Bible are mingled with such pre-Christian symbols as the phoenix, which often represented an allegory of the Resurrection. Emblems, signs and symbols were an integral part of the various kinds of Christian theology at this time, and would have been easily recognisable to a literate believer.
People
The style of the painting is Netherlandish, but as the texts are in English the painting may be by a British artist who had worked abroad, or by a foreign artist working for a British patron.
