Mater Dolorosa

This grieving Virgin was never meant to be seen alone. Around 1480, in Bruges, a small panel like this one hung beside a second of equal size showing Christ crowned with thorns, the two set close so that a private owner could pray to the pair, mother and son turned toward each other. Their halves have since drifted apart, and a Man of Sorrows now in Genoa may be the missing companion to this face. For a long time no one was sure whose hand it was. It passed under the names of Dürer and of Joos van Cleve before scholars settled on Hans Memling, the busiest painter in Bruges in these years, who repeated this weeping head several times for devout buyers. What stays with you is how little drama he allows her. The tears are exact, the mouth barely open, the grief turned inward.