The Descent from the Cross

Colijn de Coter painted this Descent from the Cross around 1510, depicting the removal of Christ's body from the Cross in the tradition of northern European devotional painting established by Rogier van der Weyden's definitive Deposition. De Coter was a Brussels-based painter who worked in the tradition of Rogier and Memling, and his Deposition scenes show the influence of this great predecessor in their careful figure construction and emotional restraint. The Flemish tradition of the Deposition—the formal arrangement of the mourning figures, the dignified treatment of Christ's body, the controlled expression of grief—was one of the most refined devotional visual traditions in European painting, and De Coter maintained its standards with considerable skill into the early sixteenth century.

The Deposition scene follows the compositional traditions established by Rogier van der Weyden's celebrated treatment of the subject. The careful rendering of the figures' grief and the physical weight of Christ's body create a powerful devotional image.