Christ's Descent into Limbo

Christ's Descent into Limbo, painted in 1597 on copper and now in the Mauritshuis, is an early masterwork demonstrating Jan Brueghel the Elder's command of the miniature painting tradition practised on metal supports. The subject — Christ's harrowing of Hell between his death and Resurrection, liberating the souls of the righteous who died before his coming — gave painters extraordinary licence for imaginative landscape and figure invention, picturing the cavernous underworld as a vast, dramatic space. Brueghel, just returned from his formative years in Italy studying with Cardinal Federico Borromeo in Milan and visiting Rome, brought a newly sophisticated command of large-scale spatial recession to this small-format work. The copper support, used by Flemish miniaturists since the late sixteenth century, allowed a smooth, enamel-like surface that Brueghel exploited for luminous precision. The Mauritshuis holds this work alongside other masterpieces of Flemish and Dutch Golden Age painting, where it represents the Antwerp counterpart to Amsterdam-centred Dutch painting.

Oil on copper, the smooth non-absorbent ground allows paint to be worked with extraordinary fineness. Brueghel builds the hellish landscape in warm amber and orange tones punctuated by cool darkness, using luminous detail to render the multitude of liberated souls and demons. The copper's reflective quality contributes a metallic warmth that enhances the fiery subterranean atmosphere.