Die Beweinung Christi

Look past the grieving figures to the walled town on the left. It is meant to be Jerusalem, but the stepped gables and low green hills belong to Flanders, the country the painter actually knew. Around 1460 an artist rarely traveled to picture a place he had never seen. He simply set the scene in the world outside his own window and trusted that no one would mind. Mary kneels over her dead son while the disciples let their tears run without shame, an openness of grief that Netherlandish painters of the time made their specialty. For most of the 19th century this panel hung under the name of Hans Memling, Rogier's own pupil, who was then the more famous of the two. It is the oldest painting in its museum in The Hague.