The Descent from the Cross (Rubens at Antwerp)

The dead Christ slides down from the cross along a long diagonal, his luminous, broken body received onto a white shroud by straining mourners while the Virgin reaches up from below. The central panel of a triptych for Antwerp Cathedral, where it still stands, it is among Rubens's supreme achievements - grief organized into a single descending sweep, the pale flesh glowing against dark sky and red robe. After the thunder of his Elevation of the Cross, he answers here with tenderness and gravity. A later treatment of the same subject is also in this collection.