The Descent from the Cross, after Rogier van der Weyden

Around 1435 Rogier van der Weyden painted a triptych for the Archer’s Guild at Louvain. By 1549 the central panel, depicting the Descent from the Cross, had been acquired by Mary of Hungary, who later gave it to her nephew Philip II of Spain. Today in the Prado, Madrid, the picture is one of the masterpieces of early Netherlandish art. In 1565, undoubtedly due to recent interest in the painting, the Antwerp publisher and impresario Hieronymus Cock had Cornelis Cort engrave the composition. The resulting print was unusual for Cort, who was primarily concerned with Italianate and then Italian subjects. More important, it was the first explicit reproduction of a fifteenth-century Netherlandish painting. The print is extremely rare, however, this being one of only two impressions in the United States. The most innovative and influential engraver of the third quarter of the century, Cort reconciled the earlier emphasis on design and ideal appearance with more varied description and closer approximation of pictorial effects. Formed and first active in Cock’s workshop, he went to Italy in 1565. Becoming Titian’s preferred interpreter, he developed an unprecedentedly rich and differentiated system of engraving. Point of departure for Hendrick Goltzius in the Netherlands and Agostino Carracci in Italy, this system would help determine the development of the technique.