L'Entrée du Christ à Jérusalem

Christ rides into Jerusalem wrapped in blue and crimson while the crowd throws branches at his feet. Van Dyck was only about 18 when he painted it, and the canvas still feels young and restless.

The story behind the painting

Van Dyck painted this scene in 1617, when he was about 18 and already the principal assistant of Peter Paul Rubens in Antwerp. It shows Jesus entering Jerusalem as told in the Gospels, the event remembered on Palm Sunday. While he was working toward a more robust style of his own, Rubens's influence shows in the vivid colour, the dynamic composition and the grand scale. The canvas is large, about 151 by 229 cm.

What to look for

The young donkey Christ rides is almost hidden by his rich blue and crimson robes. His disciples walk around him, and local people greet him joyfully, laying branches in his path. The colours are bright and the brushstrokes slashing. The figures are large, muscular and restless, in a characteristically Baroque way, and their naturalism brings the story very close to the viewer. Let your eye follow the branches on the ground up to the calm figure at the centre of all this motion.

Meaning and intent

The painting follows the biblical accounts closely, but its force lies in the energy of the young painter. The size and immediacy of the figures turn a familiar story into drama. When the Prado showed it in 2012 to 2013, it was singled out as one of his most experimental works, painted as he tried to heighten the visual impact of his pictures. It shows how early his mastery came.

Legacy

Herman C. Krannert and his wife bought it in 1958 as a gift for the Herron School of Art, which later grew in part into the Indianapolis Museum of Art, where it hangs as accession number 58.3. From November 2012 to March 2013 it travelled to the Prado for The Young van Dyck, an exhibition of about 90 works from his years in Antwerp, between the ages of 16 and 22.