The Dead Christ and the Virgin

Christ is shown upright after the Crucifixion, bloody and almost naked, and the Virgin beside him holds his limp arm with one hand while she touches his wound with the other. Images of this kind, known as the Man of Sorrows, were made in the 14th century for private prayer, to keep the mind on Christ's suffering.

The panel was probably the left half of a folding pair. The other half, with Saint John the Evangelist and Mary Magdalene grieving, is in the Metropolitan Museum in New York. The broad, bulky figures come from Giotto's manner, and the pair may have been made for Queen Sancia, wife of King Robert of Naples, whose prayers centred above all on the body of Christ. The collector Henry Wagner gave the panel to the National Gallery in 1924.