Lot Essay
This composition repeats the central group of six figures found in Hans Witdoeck's engraving after a lost, late Rubens composition. Jay Richard Judson identified no fewer than seven further painted variants, none of which he accepted as Rubens' original (see J.R. Judson, Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, Part VI: The Passion of Christ, Turnhout, 2000, pp. 234-236, nos. 71.1-71.7).