Descent from the Cross

The Descent from the Cross by the Master of the Figdor Deposition, painted around 1487 and now in the Gemäldegalerie Berlin, depicts the removal of Christ's body from the cross by Joseph of Arimathea, Nicodemus, and the disciples — the moment of tender human care following the horror of the Crucifixion. The anonymous master takes his name precisely from a Deposition panel in the Figdor collection in Vienna, making the Gemäldegalerie's Descent from the Cross an important companion work that helps define the artist's style and range. The Deposition or Descent from the Cross was among the most emotionally potent subjects in northern European devotional painting, demanding from the painter both anatomical skill in rendering the dead body and emotional range in depicting the grief of the mourners. The Master of the Figdor Deposition brought to this subject the blend of Flemish naturalism and German emotional intensity that characterizes his known works.

The composition organizes the descent around the body of Christ, whose pale, limp form is handled with careful attention to the physical difficulties of lowering a body from a cross — the ropes, the supporting hands, the precarious ladder. The mourning figures surrounding this central action are rendered with the artist's characteristic expressiveness, their grief differentiated through varied posture and gesture.