Southwest German School, circa 1480

The format of this small diptych of Christ as the Man of Sorrows, flanked by his grieving mother, was established by the Leuven painter Dirk Bouts (c. 1410/15-1475) and popularised by the workshop of his son, Albrecht (c. 1455-1549), during the second half of the fifteenth century. Designed to emphasise Christ’s humanity, and to inspire the viewer to imitate the Virgin’s anguish at His suffering, such objects became widely popular. Indeed, so seemingly prevalent was demand for these pictures that painters across Europe began emulating Netherlandish models, with artists like Domenico Ghirlandaio (1449-1494) producing faithful copies of Flemish Ecce Homo types (Ghirlandaio’s copy of Hans Memling’s (c. 1433-1494) Christ as the Man of Sorrows, composed as a diptych with a depiction of the Virgin, is now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, inv. no. 1176a, and Memling’s picture in the Palazzo Bianco, Genoa, inv. no. P.B. 1569).

This small diptych shows the evidently important influence that Bouts’s model had in Germany. Instead of depicting the grieving Virgin in prayer, as Bouts and his workshop had done, the painter instead followed the example of an engraving by Martin Schöngauer (c. 1445-1491), which showed Mary raising her hand to her face, wiping away her falling tears. This gesture was ultimately derived from compositions by Rogier van der Weyden (c. 1399-1464), appearing in a number of his great works, like the figure of Mary of Cleophas(?) in the Descent from the Cross (Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado, inv. no. P002825); the Magdalene in the Triptych of the Crucifixion (Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, inv. no. GG901) and the Virgin in his monumental Crucifixion made for the Scheut charterhouse outside Brussels (Madrid, Real Monasterio de San Lorenzo, El Escorial, inv. no. 10014602). The master of the present Mater Dolorosa, in fact, remained closer to Rogierian types by covering the Virgin’s hand with her mantle, rather than using the ambitious foreshortening of Schöngauer’s example. The style of the diptych is comparable to the work of the Sterzinger Master, active in Ulm during the mid-fifteenth century. Panels like his Crucifixion in the Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe (inv. no. 33) show numerous similarities in the modelling of the figures’ faces, the sculptural drapery and even the repetition of the female figure wiping her eyes.