A drawing after Rubens's Crucifixion in Antwerp showing Christ on the cross, with a crown of thorns on his head and suggestion of spear and wound in his side. Vignette. There is a copy of this drawing by Queen Victoria (RCIN 980140).

In August 1840, following a nervous breakdown from which he never fully recovered, Edwin Landseer set off on a European tour on the orders of his doctors. He travelled to Belgium, along the Rhine to Cologne, then south to Geneva, returning to England via Paris in January the following year. While in Antwerp, at the start of his journey, he copied the heads of Christ and the thieves in Rubens's great Crucifixion, popularly known as Le coup de lance, painted in 1619-20 for the high altar of the church of the Friars Minor in Antwerp (to the commission of Nicolaas Rockox), but then as now in the Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten.

Queen Victoria's admiration for Landseer never waned, from her first sight of his works at the Royal Academy in 1833 until the artist's death forty years later, and there are fifty-two of his paintings now in the Royal Collection. Unlike many of the artists patronised by Victoria, Landseer was socially adept, staying as a guest at many noble Scottish houses, and at Balmoral often dining with the Queen. After Landseer's death his family planned an exhibition of work remaining in his studio, to be followed by a sale. Queen Victoria was anxious to see the present drawing, of which she had made a copy under the artist's instruction in February 1851. As she felt it would be too distressing to return to Landseer's studio in St John's Wood, London, where she had occasionally visited him, a number of works were sent to Windsor for her to see. Landseer's family asked the Queen to accept the three copies of the Crucifixion, together with two oil sketches, in memory of the artist. The Queen had the three pastels framed and hung at Windsor Castle.

Text adapted from Holbein to Hockney: Drawings from the Royal Collection, 2004