Ars: časopis Ústavu Dejín Umenia Slovenskej Akadémie Vied (42.2009)

6. Workshop of Frans Pions (?), possihly Crispijn van den Broeck: Christ Carrying the Cross, detail. Poston (Mass.), Private Collection. Photo:
Author, by permission of the oivner.

As the Prague drawing attests, Floris subsequently
ušed these techniques of drawing as a means to ex-
periment with and ultimately promulgate a successful
composition within his studio and beyond.80
The Oil Sketch
A recently discovered grisaille panel of Christ
Carrying the Cross sold in 2007 as the work of Floris’s
collaborator Crispijn Van den Broeck may add an
important dimension to our understanding of the
role of preparátory drawing in Floris’s workshop and
should prompt further reconsideration of Venetian
influence [Fig. 5].81 The scale and tonal use of oil in

where it is John who appears to uphold the Virgin with such
intimacy. See VAN DE VELDE 1975 (see in note 3), Vol. 1,
pp. 207-208, No. S60; Vol. 2, fig. 25. This gesture was also
explored by Lambert Lombard in his equally massive Descent
from the Cross (pen and brown ink with brown wash over red
chalk, 510 x 410 mm; Liège, Cabinet des Estampes, Inv. No.
K/341/25); see DENHAENE 1990 (see in note 10), p. 106,
fig. 122; BERT 2006 (see in note 21), p. 45, fig. 15; Lambert
Lombard... 2006 (see in note 10), pp. 430-431, No. 83, fig. 402;
possibly preparátory to a painted altarpiece for the Tornaco
family in the Church of Saint-Jean l’Evangeliste, Liège.
80 One derivative of Floris’s treatment of the theme of Christ
on the Cross is in the Slovák National Gallery at Bratislava, Inv.
No. O 4693; oil on panel, 125.5 X 97.8 cm. See CIULISOVÁ

this mono chrome work are evocative of the Göttin-
gen and Prague drawings; the figural types clearly de-
rive from Floris’s models and the handling of opaque
glazes of oil paint evokes Floris’s männer of painting;
although abraded, the work appears to bear Floris’s
monogram as inventorcÁ the composition [Fig. 6]. Jus-
tus Müller Hofstede first described Floris’s décisive
role in the development of the preparátory drawing
in the North and considered his modelli to be one of
the artist’s foremost successes in the importation of
a robust Italian disegno to the North;82 the existence
of this panel may bolster that assertion.
The panel’s iconography is intricately bound to
that of the commission for the Christ on the Cross
2006 (see in note 51), pp. 64-67, with bibliography.
81 Oil on panel, 31.5 X 49 cm, signed lower right: FF IV (?);
Boston (MA), Private Coll. Sold, London, Emanuel von Bayer,
2007. In the sales catalogue, a tenuous connection was made
to the iconography of a print by Johan Wierix after Gerard
van Groeningen illustrating Benito Arias Montano’s 1573
Christi lesu vita... See l'he Nein Hollstein Dutch andFlemish Etch-
ings, Engravings and Woodcuts. Gerard van Groeningen. Eds. Ch.
SCHUCKMAN - G. LUIJTEN. Rotterdam 1997, No. 351.
82 HOFSTEDE, J. M.: Aspekte der Entwurfszeichnung bei
Rubens: Stil und Überlieferungin der Kunst des Abendandes.
In: Akten des 21. Internationale Kongress für Kunstgeschichte. Bonn
1964, p. 199.

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