摘要：An early Netherlandish Christ Bearing the Cross from around 1470 (New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art) depicts Christ, front and center, stumbling as he makes his way toward Calvary (fig. 1). He is surrounded by a greater parade, which includes two other thieves, military officials, the many who mock and abuse him, and, of course, the faithful, most obviously Saint Veronica, who kneels ready to receive the imprint of the holy face, and the Virgin Mary with Saint John and other holy women. This noisy crowd spills forth from the gates of a prominent walled city in the right middle distance and circles round toward the mount of Calvary in the left background, where others prepare and raise the three crosses. The city looks quite similar to any contemporary Netherlandish city, with overhanging timbered houses and step-gabled facades, but for one obvious detail: in its center is a massive and archaic round temple, enclosed by a circular wall, with a ground level encrusted by half-round chapels, and its upper reaches narrowing to a low dome, supported by flying buttresses. Certainly intended to be Herod's third Temple of Solomon, though loosely and anachronistically based upon the Dome of the Rock (albeit updated with Gothic flying buttresses), this structure helps transform an otherwise anonymous Netherlandish city into Jerusalem itself, an appropriate setting for the Way to Calvary.1
