# Deposition [View the canonical artwork record]() ## Artwork - Artist: [WEYDEN, Rogier van der]() - Date: 1401-1450 - Technique: Oil on oak panel, 220 x 262 cm ## Commentary The earliest painting that can be ascribed to Rogier van der Weyden with any certainty is also the artist's greatest and most influential extant work: the great Deposition. It cannot have been painted very long after 1435, the year established by dendrochronological dating methods, which would also fit the circumstances of Rogier's life at the time. On the other hand, it must have been painted before 1443, the date of the earliest copy \(in the Sint-Pieterskerk, Leuven\). The Deposition was an altarpiece, intended for the chapel of the Confraternity of the Archers of Leuven, who commissioned it. \(The two small crossbows in the lower spandrels of the tracery in the picture refer to the Confraternity.\). Mary of Hungary \(1505-1558\), Regent of the Netherlands, acquired the painting from the Archers of Leuven before 1548. Later it came into the possession of her nephew King Philip II of Spain \(1527-1598; king from 1556\), who finally placed it in the monastery fortress of the Escorial he had founded near Madrid. At that time the Deposition formed the centre of a triptych, but there is no indication that the side wings were originally part of the work, it is more likely that the Deposition was originally a single panel. At about 2.2 meters high and 2.6 meters wide, the painting is very large by the usual standards of Early Netherlandish pictures; in terms of concept it is truly monumental. Ten figures in all cover the painted surface almost entirely, with their heads close to the upper edge of the panel. The body of Jesus has already been removed from the Cross, and is received by two elderly men, the bearded Joseph of Arimathaea and Nicodemus. Surrounded by Jesus's mourning friends they are holding His dead body for a moment before setting it down. Mary is sinking to the ground in a faint beside her son, and is supported by John, the favourite disciple of Jesus, and by one of the holy women. On the extreme right, the despairing Mary Magdalene seems on the brink of collapse. The scene shown would have lasted for only a moment, but there is nothing momentary about its depiction, which is quite detached from the historical event. Rogier achieves this effect principally by placing the group in a painted niche like an altar shrine; the hill of Golgotha, the Place of Skulls where the Cross stood, is suggested only by skulls and arm bones on the narrow strip of stone floor. A connection is thus established with those gilded shrines holding painted statues that were a particularly costly and lavish form of retable. However, Rogier was not imitating a carved altar. He shows "live" figures rather than statues, and the life-like effect is emphasized by their appearance, almost life-size, in the place where mere wooden statues would be expected in an altar. Using such methods, Rogier gives them the three-dimensionality of statues but the look of a painting, which is much more life-like than sculpture. However, such considerations would have played only a minor part in Rogier's decision to set the scene in the painted altar niche. His primary concern was to emphasize the forcefulness of the depiction. Rogier even departs deliberately from what can be rationally imagined, and so breaks with the manner of realistic spatial depiction that had only recently been achieved in painting. The niche he paints is deep enough at the bottom of the picture to accommodate several figures, the upright of the Cross, and the ladder leaning against it; but in some areas at the top it seems to come close to the surface of the picture - the helper on the ladder is pressed tightly into the shallow upper space of the shrine, while the head of the bearded Joseph of Arimathaea just below seems to protrude from the picture. All the figures are brought forward by the golden back wall so that the space surrounds them closely: convincing as their actions may look individually, there would never really have been room for them all. The result is a sense of timelessness and an … ## Related artworks - [Abegg Triptych]() - [Annunciation]() - [Annunciation Triptych]() - [Bladelin Triptych \(central panel\)]() - [Bladelin Triptych \(exterior\)]() - [Bladelin Triptych \(left wing\)]() - [Bladelin Triptych]() - [Bladelin Triptych \(right wing\)]() - [Braque Family Triptych \(central panel\)]() - [Braque Family Triptych \(closed\)]() - [Braque Family Triptych \(detail\)]() - [Braque Family Triptych \(left wing\)]() ## Attribution [Web Gallery of Art]()