About This Artwork

German (Rhenish?)

Triptych of the Crucifixion with Saints Anthony, Christopher, James and George, c. 1400

Tempera and oil (estimated) on panel
Center 22 5/16 x 16 7/8 in. (56.7 x 40.4 cm); left wing 22 1/4 x 8 1/8 in. (56.6 x 20.6 cm); right wing 22 3/8 x 7 7/8 in. (56.8 x 20 cm)
Inscribed: inri (on tablet on cross), vere:filius:dei:erat i[nh]r (on banderole)
Mr. and Mrs. Martin A. Ryerson Collection, 1947.394

Exhibition, Publication and Ownership Histories

Exhibition History

The Art Institute of Chicago, New Light on Old Masters: Research on Northern European and Spanish Paintings before 1600 in the Art Institute, 26 June—14 September 2008, no cat.

Publication History

Hans Huth, “A Medieval Painting,” Bulletin of the Art Institute of Chicago 42 (1948), pp. 18-20, ill. p. 18.

Charles de Tolnay, “An Early Dutch Panel: A Contribution to the Panel Painting before Bosch” in Miscellanea Leo Van Puyvelde, Brussels, 1949, pp. 49-54, figs. 1-3.

Erwin Panofsky, Early Netherlandish Painting, Its Origins and Its Character, Cambridge, Mass., 1953, pp. 97, 395.

J[osef] Duverger, “Brugse Schilders ten tijde van Jan van Eyck” in Bulletin des Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique 4 (1955), p. 92.

Harry Bober, “The Cleveland ‘Crucifixion’” in Miscellanea Prof. Dr. D. Roggen, Antwerp, 1957, pp. 42-44, fig. 5.

Jan Bialostocki, “Opus Quinque Dierum”: Dürer’s ‘Christ Among the Doctors” and Its Sources,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 22 (1958), p. 24.

Art Institute of Chicago, Paintings in The Art Institute of Chicago: A Catalogue of the Picture Collection, Chicago, 1961, p. 174.

Gerhard Schmidt, “’Pre-Eyckian Realism’: Versuch einer Abgrenzung” in Flanders in a European Perspective, Manuscript Illumination around 1400 in Flanders and Abroad, ed. Maurits Smeyers and Bert Cardon, Leuven, 1995, pp. 748-9, fig. 3.

Ownership History

Count Johann Nepomuk Wilczek (d. 1922), Burg Kreuzenstein, near Vienna [in a letter of 31 March, 1947, Abris Silberman stated to Art Institute director Daniel Catton Rich that he had acquired the picture “about twenty-five years ago” from the Wilczek collection; letter in AIC archives]; Kunsthandlung Silbermann, Vienna, about 1922; sold to Dr. Oskar Bondy (d. 1944), Vienna and New York; his widow Elisabeth Soinig Bondy until shortly before March 1947 [in a letter of 5 March, 1947 Abris Silberman stated, “We have re-acquired [the triptych] from Mrs. Bondy recently”; letter in Art Institute archives; the painting was not among the objects sealed in the Bondy’s Vienna apartment in 1938; for this list see Sophie Lillie, Was einmal war: Handbuch der enteigneten Kunstsammlungen Wiens, Vienna, 2003, pp. 218-44]; A. and E. Silberman, New York, 1947; acquired by the Art Institute with de-accession funds, 1947.