Man of Sorrows

This panel shows Christ as the Man of Sorrows, alive and upright but marked by the wounds of the Passion and displaying them to the viewer. It is a devotional image type that spread widely across Europe in the 15th century, made to be looked at closely and prayed before rather than to tell a story. This example, from around 1490, is the work of an unknown hand, and it shows the mixing that was common then. Its style points to a Spanish-Flemish origin, the meeting of Netherlandish painting technique with Iberian taste that trade and travelling artists carried back and forth. Objects like this were made for private prayer, set up at home or in a small chapel, and the name of the painter, as with most such panels, was never written down.