FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 2025 
This Week in La Gazette Drouot : Christ on the Cross Attributed to Peter Paul Rubens
T he sale of this forgotten and rediscovered work by the Antwerp painter is set to be one of the highlights of the international art market.
By Philippe Dufour
Read the full version of "Pierre Soulages: a 1956 painting bought in New York by architect Walter Netsch" in La Gazette Drouot
The climax of the Passion mystery ? The precise moment when Christ gives up the ghost, accompanied by supernatural phenomena described in Luke's Gospel : "The sun was darkened and the veil of the Temple was torn in the middle" (Luke 23.45). It was this tragic episode, symbolized by the body of the supplicant standing out against a background of dark clouds, that Peter Paul Rubens chose to depict in Christ on the Cross, painted on panel around 1614-1615, and analyzed at length in Gazette no. 32.
This masterly work had long been forgotten , but recently reappeared before being studied by Professor Nils Büttner, then authenticated by the Rubens Committee (Rubenshuis, Antwerp). As such, it is destined to join the Addenda and Corrigenda of the catalog raisonné of Peter Paul Rubens.
Yet Christ on the Cross was by no means an unknown work... at least to the painter William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905), who acquired it and exhibited it in his Paris mansion. Considered by many to be a copy, the panel was never studied, and has remained in the academic painter's family ever since, although he recently decided to part with it. At the same time, Belgian art historian Max Rooses (1839-1914) included our Christ on the Cross in his catalog raisonné of the master's work (published between 1886 and 1892), as a lost work. The scholar was referring to a widely circulated engraving of the work (inverted) by Lucas Vosterman I, dating from around 1622-1624...
Read the full version of "Pierre Soulages: a 1956 painting bought in New York by architect Walter Netsch" in La Gazette Drouot
The climax of the Passion mystery ? The precise moment when Christ gives up the ghost, accompanied by supernatural phenomena described in Luke's Gospel : "The sun was darkened and the veil of the Temple was torn in the middle" (Luke 23.45). It was this tragic episode, symbolized by the body of the supplicant standing out against a background of dark clouds, that Peter Paul Rubens chose to depict in Christ on the Cross, painted on panel around 1614-1615, and analyzed at length in Gazette no. 32.
This masterly work had long been forgotten , but recently reappeared before being studied by Professor Nils Büttner, then authenticated by the Rubens Committee (Rubenshuis, Antwerp). As such, it is destined to join the Addenda and Corrigenda of the catalog raisonné of Peter Paul Rubens.
Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640)
Christ on the Cross
Oil on panel, circa 1614-1615
105,5 x 72,5 cm.
Estimation : €1 - 2 Million
Christ on the Cross
Oil on panel, circa 1614-1615
105,5 x 72,5 cm.
Estimation : €1 - 2 Million
Yet Christ on the Cross was by no means an unknown work... at least to the painter William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905), who acquired it and exhibited it in his Paris mansion. Considered by many to be a copy, the panel was never studied, and has remained in the academic painter's family ever since, although he recently decided to part with it. At the same time, Belgian art historian Max Rooses (1839-1914) included our Christ on the Cross in his catalog raisonné of the master's work (published between 1886 and 1892), as a lost work. The scholar was referring to a widely circulated engraving of the work (inverted) by Lucas Vosterman I, dating from around 1622-1624...
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