Lamentation over the Body of Christ

This panel is small, about 36 centimetres tall, and Dosso painted it around 1517 or 1518. Christ lies on the ground, his body gone grey against the pink faces of the living. The Virgin kneels at his feet with her arms thrown wide inside her dark mantle. Mary Magdalene kneels at his head, and behind them Mary Cleophas tears at her hair. The cross is pushed over to the left edge, and far off three crosses stand on the hill of Calvary.

Look at the ground in front. The crown of thorns lies there, and beside it the dice the soldiers threw for Christ's clothes, a detail the National Gallery calls very uncommon in this scene. The light goes on in jagged white strokes and flickers of yellow and pink.

The picture came to the Gallery in 1924 from the critic Sir Claude Phillips, the first keeper of the Wallace Collection, who had bought it at a London sale around 1906. The Venetian frame, made in the same century as the painting, was bought for it in 1995.