Side panels from a triptych: Joseph of Arimathea (left panel) and Mary Magdalen (right panel)

These side panels depicting Joseph of Arimathea and Mary Magdalene, now at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, once flanked a central Deposition or Entombment narrative that has either been separated or lost. Pieter Coecke van Aelst's 1533 triptych wings show two figures whose significance in the Passion narrative was complementary: Joseph of Arimathea provided the tomb and the courage to ask Pilate for Christ's body, while Mary Magdalene was the first witness of the Resurrection, the apostola apostolorum (apostle to the apostles). Their placement as guardians of a central Passion scene on the wings reflects the Flemish convention of framing the central doctrinal image with saints whose lives intersect with the depicted event. San Francisco's collection of European panel paintings, built through the combined resources of the de Young and Legion of Honor museums, preserves works that traveled to America through the nineteenth- and twentieth-century art market.

Wing panels isolated from their central composition present conservators and art historians with the challenge of reconstructing the original altarpiece program. The scale and palette of these panels would have been calibrated to complement a central composition of specific dimensions and tonality. Their survival as a pair suggests they were sold together when the triptych was dismembered, preserving the lateral relationship even after the center was lost.