Peter Paul Rubens's Elevation of the Cross, installed in 1611 in the Cathedral of Our Lady in Antwerp as a triptych altarpiece, is the companion work to the Descent from the Cross completed the following year for the same cathedral. Together the two triptychs constitute the most ambitious decorative commission in seventeenth-century Northern European religious art, and each must be understood in relation to the other: one depicts the moment of raising, the other of lowering; one the violent assertion of execution, the other the tender grief of deposition.
The Elevation's central panel measures approximately 460 by 340 centimeters and depicts the moment recorded in John 19:18 - or more precisely, the moment that precedes the synoptic accounts: the soldiers and executioners physically straining to lift the cross with Christ already nailed to it into its upright position. Rubens depicts this moment with overwhelming physical force: the central figure of a nude executioner bracing his back against the timber, his muscles defined under enormous strain; a second figure hauling on a rope; a third pushing from below. The cross fills the diagonal of the panel from lower left to upper right, Christ's body ascending with it against a darkening sky.
The biblical warrant for this particular moment - the raising rather than simply the nailing - is John 3:14: 'Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up.' Christ had spoken these words to Nicodemus in John 3:14-15, and their elaboration in John 12:32 - 'And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself' - gives the elevation its theological significance beyond mere execution. The lifting up is not simply an act of murder but a fulfillment of divine purpose: the raised serpent in the wilderness (Numbers 21:8-9) was the type; the crucified Christ is the antitype.
Rubens had returned from Italy in 1608, saturated with Michelangelo, Caravaggio, and the antique. The Elevation of the Cross is the first full expression of his mature style: the twisting, muscular figures derive from the Laocoön and the Sistine ceiling; the dramatic lighting - the torchlight and darkening sky - from Caravaggio; the dynamic diagonal composition from Tintoretto. But Rubens synthesized these influences into something distinctly his own: a physical intensity in the service of theological statement, bodies as instruments of divine drama.
The triptych's outer panels depict St. Eligius, patron of the guild whose chapel originally housed the work, and the Virgin and Child, maintaining the altarpiece's liturgical function while extending its pictorial world. When the triptych is closed, grisaille paintings of the Visitation are visible - the encounter of Mary and Elizabeth (Luke 1:39-45) that prefigures the saving significance of the child Mary carries.
The Elevation was originally painted for St. Walburga's church in Antwerp, which was demolished during the French Revolutionary period. When the church was suppressed, the two great Rubens triptychs were moved to the Cathedral of Our Lady, where they remain in situ, flanking the choir. Viewing them in the cathedral - as opposed to in a museum - reproduces something of their original liturgical context: the altarpieces were designed to be seen in a space of worship, where the physical experience of the cathedral's Gothic architecture frames and interprets the paintings' Baroque drama.
The pairing of the Elevation and the Descent in the cathedral creates a visual theology of the complete arc of the Passion: the ascending violence of execution and the descending tenderness of deposition, each requiring the other to be fully understood. Christ raised by the strength of those who execute him; Christ lowered by the love of those who mourn him. The two poles of John 19 - the execution and the burial - are visualized with equal dramatic power.
For further reading: Julius Held, The Oil Sketches of Peter Paul Rubens (1980); Mark Lamster, Master of Shadows: The Secret Diplomatic Career of the Painter Peter Paul Rubens (2009); Michael Jaffe, Rubens and Italy (1977); Nils Büttner, Peter Paul Rubens (2017); David Freedberg, Rubens: The Life of Christ after the Passion (1984).