Christus in der Vorhölle

The story of Christ in Limbo has its origins in the

Gospel of Nicodemus, which was likely written in

the fourth century and was well-known in the early

modern Netherlands. According to this apocryphal

text, the Savior travelled down into the underworld

on the third day after his Crucifixion to liberate the

righteous of the Old Testament. Those figures in the

biblical narrative who had died prior to the death of

Christ—his ancestors, the patriarchs and prophets of

the Old Covenant—had all been in Limbo from the

time of their death up until their anticipated entry

into the Kingdom of Heaven. Originally envisioned

as a neutral realm, Limbo was reinterpreted during

the High Middle Ages as an antechamber of Hell,

now pictured as an infernal domain.

Accordingly, Jacques de Gheyn II (1565–1629)

visualized this episode amid a rugged, demonic

landscape with bodies of water, architectural

ruins, and an overcast sky dark with clouds and

swathes of smoke. Only after a second glance can

one discern the figure of Christ at the left edge of

the image: with his cross-staff and victory flag, he

seems to have broken open the heavy doors to the

land of the dead in order to lead the naked souls of

the Old Testament toward the light. Much of the

depiction is dominated by monstrous, composite

creatures engaged in a wide range of activities that

the artist conceived with an extraordinary graphic

imagination.

The tendency to render the netherworld as a landscape

began with Jheronimus Bosch (c. 1450–1516),

an artist working in Brabant almost one hundred

years before De Gheyn. Until the turn of the

sixteenth century, Hell and Limbo had generally

been represented as enormous animal mouths that

did not permit a differentiated spatial configuration

of these realms. Such a gaping mouth of Hell is

integrated as a motivic detail into the Albertina

drawing: on the right, within the wide-open jaws of

this fishlike monstrosity, an owl, symbol of darkness

and evil, has found its natural habitat.

Until the early nineteenth century, this sheet was

ascribed to Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1526/27–1569).1

After Benesch reattributed it to Karel van Mander

(1548–1606), roughly a decade later, on the basis

of stylistic observations,2 Van Regteren Altena

recognized the drawing as the work of De Gheyn.3

Imagery of the fantastic and the grotesque assumed

a central role in the oeuvre of this Antwerp-born

master, who probably immigrated to the Northern

Netherlands prior to 1585. In particular, De Gheyn’s

portrayals of witches and their supernatural activities

enjoyed great popularity in bourgeois society, as

evidenced by their frequent reproduction in print.4

In contrast to Bosch’s renderings, with their scatological

critique of a sinful world, by the turn of the

seventeenth century absurd creatures and bizarre

landscapes were increasingly prompted by a desire

for horrors. Analogous to his meticulous observational

studies, De Gheyn prepared his diabolical

depictions in the form of drawings as if from nature.

In works such as Studies of Attributes and Creatures

of Witchcraft, in Paris,5 he developed an array of

toad-like monsters—wildly contorted and endowed

with human sexual characteristics—which, only on

closer viewing, prove to be imaginary hybrids.

A precise date for Christ in Limbo has not been

given; Van Regteren Altena aligns the work chronologically

with a technically and stylistically related

drawing in Orléans6 that he dates to 1595–1600.7

Also, the sketch for a Witches’ Sabbath, in Stuttgart,

made about 1605, is closely connected in motif to

the Vienna drawing, thereby suggesting a date

around the turn of the century.8 A painting that

matches the Albertina sheet in composition but

differs in several details was offered for sale in

Cologne in 1913.9 Still incorrectly identified as the

work of “Pieter Brueghel (Höllenbreughel”)10 in the

auction catalogue, the panel reveals obvious artistic

flaws when compared to the sheet.11 It was probably

painted after the drawing by one of the artists

associated with De Gheyn in Leiden, where the

master was active until around 1600.

 

1. For a drawing of Limbo by Bruegel, see [76].

2. Benesch O. 1928, 36.

3. Van Regteren Altena 1936, 33n4.

4. For examples, see Filedt Kok and Leesberg (NHD) 2000;

Swan 2005.

5. Jacques de Gheyn II, Studies of Attributes and Creatures

of Witchcraft, c. 1600–1610, pen and brown ink, black chalk,

on paper, 94 x 35.3 cm, Fondation Custodia, Paris, Frits Lugt

Collection, 6863.

6. Jacques de Gheyn II, Cove with Rugged Coastline, 1595–1600,

pen and brush and brown and gray inks, on paper, 12.8 x 19.1 cm,

Musée des Beaux-Arts, Orléans, 1238.

7. Van Regteren Altena 1983, 2:148, no. 965.

8. Jacques de Gheyn II, Witches’ Sabbath, c. 1605, pen and

brush and brown and gray inks, wash, on paper, 45 x 68.2 cm,

Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart, C 1095.

9. Van Regteren Altena 1983, 2:29–30, no. 59.

10. Heberle 1913, 6, no. 7.

11. The anatomically unconvincing figure of Christ, with an

unnaturally short neck and awkwardly elevated shoulders, has

lost its dynamic movement in comparison with the drawing. In

addition, De Gheyn’s demonic creatures, such as the monsters

creeping out of a rock crevice in the right foreground, which

had been organically integrated into the landscape, are evenly

distributed over the surface of the painting, like props.

 

Emily J. Peters, Laura M. Ritter (Hg.), AK Tales of the City. Drawing in the Netherlands from Bosch to Bruegel, Cleveland Museum of Art 9.10.2022 - 8.1.2023, New Haven 2022, Kat. Nr. 77