The Seilern Triptych – The Entombment

The Seilern Triptych, showing the Entombment of Christ, is one of Robert Campin's most ambitious and emotionally powerful works, acquired by the Courtauld Gallery from Count Antoine Seilern's extraordinary private collection. The triptych's central panel brings together the mourning figures around Christ's body with a physical and psychological intensity that marks the transition from the Gothic tradition to the new naturalism of Flemish painting. Campin's figures occupy real three-dimensional space, their grief expressed through posture and gesture rather than the stylized hieratic sadness of earlier Flemish work.

The Entombment scene displays the powerful sculptural modeling that characterizes Campin's early style, with the heavy, volumetric figures arranged in a compact composition painted with the emerging oil technique of early Netherlandish art.