Fragment from Christ Carrying the Cross: Saint John the Evangelist

Jean Hey, (the Master of Moulins) (Master of Moulins; Netherlandish, active in France, c. 1480-c.1504)

c. 1500

Medium
Oil on panel
Classification
Painting
Dimensions
27.3 × 20 cm (10 3/4 × 7 7/8 in.); Framed: 48.9 × 66.7 × 5.1 cm (19 1/4 × 26 1/4 × 2 in.)
Culture
Netherlands
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago, Painting and Sculpture of Europe
Credit line
The Art Institute of Chicago, Mr. and Mrs. Martin A. Ryerson Collection
Rights
Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
Who can see it
Teens profiles and older: its subject is for older viewers (war, death, the Passion, drink or the like). How works are placed

View at the Art Institute of Chicago

About this work

Scientific imaging techniques, which can reveal information that lies below or has been removed from the surface layers of a painting, have determined that Saint John the Evangelist and the Mourning Virgin were once part of the same painting, Christ Carrying the Cross. Infrared reflectography revealed drawn strokes of Christ’s curling hair at the lower right of the Saint John panel. X-radiography shows that the top of the cross, still visible in the Saint John panel, occupied the lower left of Mourning Virgin before being scraped away and overpainted. The original work may have been repurposed to create multiple paintings of single, expressive devotional figures.

Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0