Artist: Jheronimus Van Aken
Date: 1550
Size: 51 x 81 cm
Technique: Oil On Panel
By the light of a torch, Christ is being arrested by a soldier drawing his dagger on the left. On the right, St Peter clad in a red robe is waving his dagger over the head of Malchus, who is biting Peter’s arm and warding him off by thrusting a lantern into his face. To the right of Christ’s resigned countenance is the repulsive head of Judas and two other men. Behind this group of figures, all of them half-lengths, is a rock on the left and a bush on the right. The figure group is very similar to the one on the left wing with The Arrest of Christ of the Triptych with Christ Crowned with Thorns in Valencia (fig. a).14 Another version of the centre panel of that triptych is a copy after Christ Crowned with Thorns in the Escorial,15 which Verougstraete and Van Schoute rightly regarded as a pastiche combining elements from the Christ Crowned with Thorns in London,16 and Christ Carrying the Cross in the Escorial.17 The latter two works are attributed to Jheronimus Bosch with a fair degree of certainty.18 The immediate models for the left wing with The Arrest of Christ of the Valencia triptych are not as clear, but the caricature faces of the soldiers are closely related to those in the other panels of the triptych, and are undoubtedly by the same Bosch follower. Little change was made to the figure group in the Amsterdam panel, but the composition itself was broadened to make it as half the height of the Valencia panel.19 Unverfehrt had already spotted these relationships between the different versions of The Arrest of Christ (in Valencia and elsewhere) and that in Amsterdam in 1980, and attributed them all to the Master of the Passion Triptych in Valencia, whom he placed in Antwerp around 1520-30.20 The dendrochronological dating of the centre panel of the Valencia triptych (with the youngest heartwood ring formed in 1506) and the version of the Christ Crowned with Thorns in the Escorial, the dendrochronological dating of the latter (with the youngest heartwood ring formed in 1516) gives a terminus post quem of c. 1530 for our pastiche.21 The dendrochronological dating of the Amsterdam panel allows for a very early date. It could have been painted as early as c. 1456. That, though, is completely at odds with the style of the scene, which as noted above is an imitation or pastiche in the manner of Bosch. In addition to the Amsterdam version there are two others of The Arrest of Christ which can also be dated later on stylistic grounds.22 The Amsterdam Arrest of Christ was bought in 1930 as a genuine Jheronimus Bosch for the sizable sum of 80,000 guilders. Max J. Friedländer backed the attribution at the time. The acquisition of a painting by Jheronimus Bosch was at the top of the wish list of Frederik Schmidt-Degener, the Rijksmuseum’s director-general, after a three-year loan of The Ship of Fools from the Louvre ended in 1930. Shortly after the Rijksmuseum’s purchase, Bosch’s Prodigal Son from the Figdor collection was auctioned in Vienna and bought by the Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam for 262,000 guilders - considerably more than the Rijksmuseum had paid for its painting. This was due to ‘the difference [...] between a masterpiece and a piece of rubbish’, as E. Heldring, the then chairman of the Vereniging Rembrandt, wrote in his diary. Doubts were being raised about the attribution to Bosch in the press very soon after the purchase of The Arrest of Christ,23 and not long afterwards Friedländer expressed his regret at the expert opinion he had given and had to conclude that it was a copy. As a result, The Arrest of Christ disappeared from the permanent display after the war. J. Bogers, 2010 Literature updated by J.P. Filedt Kok, 2016
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