Lamentation

This panel is set in the short interval between the cross and the tomb. The ladder still leans against the empty cross, and the nails lie in the dust. Christ's mother presses her cheek to his. Saint John, in red, holds the body on its shroud, one woman washes the wounds from a brass basin, and Mary Magdalene, in green, anoints his feet. In the rock face behind them a small square door opens into the tomb, and through a gate on the right two men are coming in. They are Nicodemus, who brought spices for the embalming, and Joseph of Arimathea, who had asked permission to bury him. Gerard David painted this late in his life, sometime between 1515 and 1523, probably for the same altarpiece as the Adoration of the Kings, also in the National Gallery.