Triptych of the Entombment

Dated 1559 and held in the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, this triptych of the Entombment is one of Van Heemskerck's more ambitious surviving multi-panel works, a format that by the mid-sixteenth century had largely given way to single-panel altarpieces but retained prestige for major commissions. The triptych format — central panel flanked by wings that could be closed during Advent and Lent — belonged to the older tradition of Flemish devotional art represented by Van Eyck and Memling, and Van Heemskerck's engagement with it in 1559 shows his awareness of historical precedent even within his thoroughly Italianised practice. The Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium holds one of the most comprehensive collections of Flemish painting from the fifteenth through seventeenth centuries, and this triptych sits as an important document of the mid-sixteenth-century Flemish engagement with Italian Renaissance form within a traditional Northern format.

The oil paint medium on panel provides a stable ground for the multi-figure composition across three panels. Van Heemskerck's characteristic underdrawing would have coordinated the overall composition across the triptych's three panels. The central entombment scene is flanked by wings likely showing donor portraits or saints, a traditional triptychwing format. The paint handling in the central panel displays Van Heemskerck's assured late style.