Ecce Agnus Dei

In the Netherlands of the 1460s, devout lay people were reading one small book above all others, The Imitation of Christ. Its author, the Augustinian canon Thomas à Kempis, was still alive in his monastery near Zwolle when Bouts painted this panel. The book opens with Christ's words, he who follows me shall not walk in darkness. That idea of following came out of the Devotio Moderna, a movement of personal, inward piety, and the museum reads this picture through it. The subject is from the Gospel of John. By the Jordan, John the Baptist sees Jesus pass and says, behold the Lamb of God, and after this the first disciples went after Jesus. Here the man being shown the way is an unknown donor, kneeling, with John beside him directing him toward Christ. The museum counts the panel among Bouts's undisputed masterpieces. It reached Munich only in 1989, bought with help from the Kulturstiftung der Länder, the cultural foundation of the German states.