Christ bidding farewell to the Virgin

The moment shown here is not in the Gospels. Christ, about to leave for Jerusalem and the death he knows is waiting there, comes to take his leave of his mother, who sinks under the news. Late-medieval devotion invented the scene so that someone at prayer could stand inside that parting and feel it. Gerard David returned to this farewell more than once, and versions survive in Dublin, Munich and New York. This one, dated 1492, is tiny, painted on oak in Bruges, and it belongs with a companion panel, the Virgin and Child between two angels making music. Closed, the two halves fold face to face, so that whoever opened the small diptych saw the sorrowful farewell beside the tender mother and child.