Willem Key (Breda 1515/20-1568 Antwerp) and Studio

A slightly larger, now untraced painting of this composition by Willem Key was formerly in the collection of the Kunsthalle, Hamburg, while another version may formerly have been in Besançon (see K. Jonckheere, Willem Key (1516-1568): Portrait of a Humanist Painter, Turnhout, 2011, pp. 162-163, no. A84, illustrated). The figure of the bearded thief in the upper left background derives from a similar figure in Michiel Coxie's Christ Carrying the Cross (El Escorial, San Lorenzo de El Escorial). Such closely cropped scenes of Christ carrying the cross were popular with a broad spectrum of painters at the middle of the sixteenth century, their immediacy enabling the viewer to more closely associate with Christ's Passion.
We are grateful to Peter van den Brink for endorsing the attribution on the basis of photographs.