Christ Carrying the Cross, with Saint Veronica and her Veil. 1576

Crispin van den Broeck

ca. 1524 Mechelen – 1591 Antwerp

This recently discovered grisaille is a welcome addition to the largely unexplored painterly oeuvre of Crispin van den Broeck (1). It can best be compared with the artist's drawn works and corresponds to a series of the Life of Christ, which van den Broeck supplied in 1576 as designs for Johann Sadeler the Elder's (1550 Brussels – 1600 Venice) engraved illustrations to L. Hillesemius's Sacrarum Antiquitatum monumenta; patriarcharum, regum, prophetarum, & virorum vere illustrium veteris Testamenti, imaginibus &elogiis apparata atque inscripta. Auctore, published in Antwerp in the following year (2). Four drawings from this series survive today (3).

The physiognomy of the figures in the grisaille, particularly that of Christ, matches those in the drawings. The areas of white heightening invite comparisons with those in a wash drawing in the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven (4).

The composition is based on an engraving produced three years earlier in the workshop of Philips Galle after a design by Gerard van Groeningen (fl. Flanders 1561 – 1575/76) (5).

Traces of a monogram on our work resemble the artist's known monograms (6).
Based on the comparison with the above-mentioned drawings, our work can also be dated to c.1576.

With brilliant mastery of the technique, van den Broeck applies the wash with an oil brush before skilfully setting accents.
Around thirty-five years later on, the technique of painting in grisaille was resumed with equal skill by another Fleming: Peter Paul Rubens (7).

(1) Formerly attributed to Adriaen van der Venne (1589 Delft – 1662 The Hague).
(2) Holl. (Crispin van den Broeck) 26 - 65.
(3) Two of these drawings are in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (Christ in Gethsemane, Inv. A 294; The Arrest in the Garden, Inv. A 295. Boon, 1978, cat. no. 94-95), a third in the Royal Library at Windsor Castle (The Last Supper, RL 4752. White. cat. no. 9) and a fourth is on the art market (The Crowning with Thorns, Sotheby's, Amsterdam, 14 November 1988, Lot 1).
(4) King David and Saint Cecilia, Inv. no. 1967.48.3. ill., in: exh. cat. The Age of Bruegel, cat. no. 21.
(5) Holl. (Gerhard van Groeningen) 351, Plate 37 in Benito Arias Montano, 1573.
(6) Malermonogramme I, 152.
(7) Exh.-cat.: Rubens 2003-2004.

Bought by a private collector, Northern America.