The Descent from the Cross

Artist

Rogier van der Weyden (c. 1399-1464) was the outstanding painter of the Low Countries in his generation and the most widely imitated artist in fifteenth-century Europe. Where Jan van Eyck pursued optical truth, van der Weyden pursued feeling — grief rendered with an exactness that made his work the template for devotional painting for a century. He held the post of official painter to the city of Brussels and died wealthy and celebrated.