The Sun Never Sets

This painting of St. Catherine of Siena is from St Dominic’s church in Caleruega, Spain.

Jusepe de Ribera, The Sense of Touch, 1632. Oil on canvas, 125 x 98 cm. Museo del Prado, Madrid

Monte Alban, Oaxaca

> Photo: Daniel Ochoa de Olza.

ph. José Luis Filpo Cabana, CC-BY - via Wikimedia Commons

Musée du Louvre

@ Museo Diocesano y Catedralicio de Valladolid.

> Photo: Daniel Ochoa De Olza.

After the success of his monumental altar triptych for Antwerp Cathedral in 1614, Rubens received a number of commissions to produce variations on the central panel, which showed the Descent from the Cross. Unlike Netherlandish paintings of the 15th and 16th centuries, which presented a detailed narrative, Rubens treated the subject in accordance with the canons set out by the Council of Trent (1545-1563). Instead of a multi-figure composition, here we find only those directly mentioned in the Gospels. Thus the dead body of Christ is supported in silent grief by Joseph of Arimathaea, Nicodemus and the young John the Evangelist. Mary, gently holding her son for the last time, symbolizes the Christian virtue of resignation. Mary Magdalene has fallen to her knees, the personification of repentance. The simplicity used in conveying the emotional state of each figure, united as they are by a common feeling of unbounded sorrow, was dictated by the artist’s desire to emphasize their understanding of the necessity and inevitability of the Messiah’s self-sacrifice. (The Hermitage)