Title:The Deposition
Artist/Maker(s):Follower ofRogier van der Weyden (Netherlandish, 1399/1400 – 1464)
Culture:Netherlandish
Date:about 1490
Medium:Oil on panel
Dimensions:61 x 99.7 cm (24 x 39 1/4 in.)
As traditional, there is skull in the middle of the painting that represents ‘death’, andthe background is painted in gold. Christ’s body looks pail and death. Viewer can easily recognize the physical whole in Jesus’s forehead and feet from nail and thorn crown. Also the spear scar can be recognized from the side of Jesus’s body. Two angels are holding each nails and thorn crown. Unlike other angels in the painting of era, the angels represent their emotion well in this painting, the emotion of ‘grieve’. Marywho looks young or may be even younger than Christ, is looking toward Jesus’s face. Although the whole scene is in sorrow and grief, Mary seems calm. In some way, she looks confident about Jesus’s death and calmly almost kissing the death Jesus. Joseph and Nicodemus are holding the Jesus’s body down from the cross. The interaction between death Jesus’s body and Mary is strong that although this is the scene of the death of Jesus Christ, all the sad, grief expression doesn’t seem to bother me. The confident and calm expression from the Mary is rather invites me to focus more into ‘salvation’. One scene of Jesus’s death described as sorrow was defeated by the faith of Mary.
