Crucifixion Diptych (van der Weyden) The painting's provenance prior to the mid-19th century is unknown. Its extreme starkness has led art historians to theorize that it was created as a devotional work, possibly for a Carthusian monastery. It is not known if the panels comprised a self-contained diptych, two-thirds of a triptych, or originally were a single panel. Some art historians have mentioned that the work seems unbalanced overall and lacking symmetry (which might indicate a missing panel or panels). Recent scholarship proposes that the panels functioned as the outer shutters of a carved altarpiece. The background to the panels is unknown. Scholars have theorized
Ildefonso Altarpiece Ildefonso Altarpiece The Ildefonso Altarpiece is a triptych painting by Peter Paul Rubens, dating to between 1630 and 1631. It is now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum of Vienna. It is named after the central panel, which shows Saint Ildefonsus's vision of the Virgin Mary, in which she gave him a "casula". On the side panels are Isabella Clara Eugenia and Albert VII, regents of the Spanish Netherlands, with their patron saints Albert and Elisabeth of Hungary. Albert had founded the Ildefonso Brotherhood in the church of Saint Jacques-sur-Coudenberg in Brussels, to encourage loyalty to the Habsburg dynasty - the altarpiece