After Sir Anthony van Dyck

This composition derives from Van Dyck's monumental Lamentation in the Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp, which was executed for the high altar of the Begijnhof church, possibly as a gift in memory of his sister Cornelia, who lived there and was buried in the choir of the church (1627). Van Dyck himself expressed the desire to be buried there in his will of March 1628. The present painting is closer in composition to a smaller repetition with slight variations, now in the Prado, Madrid.