RELIGIOUS ART BY THE OLD MASTER PAINTERS - Paintings from the Bible! Jacob de Backer; The Crucifixion

Circle of Jacob de Backer (Antwerp circa 1555-1585)

The Crucifixion 

oil on panel

103.2 x 72.3cm (40 5/8 x 28 7/16in).

Jacob de Backer, also Jacques (c. 1555 – c. 1585), was a Flemish Mannerist painter and draughtsman active in Antwerp between about 1571 and 1585. The artist studied with Antonio van Palermo and Hendrik van Steenwijk I, but that Palermo worked him so hard that the young de Backer died in the arms of his master's daughter at the age of thirty.


Although the artist painted in the high mannerist style of Giorgio Vasari, he never appeared to travel to Italy. A series of the "Seven Deadly Sins", however, was bought in Antwerp by Alessandro Farnese's secretary Cosimo Masi in 1594 and taken to Italy. These paintings are now in the Museo di Capodimonte in Naples. Other attributable works include a Last Judgment triptych by him or his studio for Christophe Plantin's tomb in the Antwerp Cathedral (c. 1589; illustrated right),[3] and an Allegory of the Three Ages of Man in the Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg.