Hugo van der Goes' most desired painting: The copies after the Large Descent from the Cross

Abstract

Appreciation for art, at least in the West, has for a long time been biased towards the concept of authenticity. Consequently, the history of copying has not received much scholarly attention in both academia and museums. In the late fifteenth century, an elaborate copy industry of panel paintings emerged in the Southern Netherlands, which brought forth a significant portion of today’s body of Early Netherlandish paintings. Perhaps the most popular composition at the time is the Large Descent from the Cross by Hugo van der Goes – based on dozens of copies that are still around in churches, museums, and private collections. This thesis aims to shed new light on the circumstances under which these copies were made by taking a closer look at the presumed original and five selected copies. In the first chapter, the production circumstances will be examined on the basis of technical studies in the field of Early Netherlandish painting and supplementary infrared reflectographs of two of the five copies. The second chapter delves deeper into the market circumstances in the Southern Netherlands in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, to identify which developments might have stimulated the emergence of the copy industry. The final chapter examines the contemporary use of the copies after the Large Descent from the Cross as devotional paintings, to better understand what might have made this particular composition so popular at the time.