The Entombment

Most surviving paintings from the 1400s are on wooden panels, which is part of why this one is unusual. Bouts made it around the middle of the century in the Low Countries on a piece of linen, using pigment bound in glue rather than oil, a cheap and fragile method meant for cloths that could be rolled and shipped. Almost all such pieces have worn away or washed out over the centuries. This survivor was probably one wing of a larger folding altarpiece, likely made for sale to Italy, and it shows Christ's body being lowered into the tomb, the mourners' grief kept quiet and still. It reached London in 1861, bought for the young National Gallery.