The Lamentation

This is a small panel, only about a foot wide, made around 1450 for someone to pray in front of at home. Petrus Christus worked in Bruges, in the wake of Jan van Eyck, and here he lays the dead Christ diagonally across a white shroud so the eye travels the whole length of the body. The two men lifting the cloth, Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, wear the everyday dress of Christus's own day rather than biblical robes, pulling the scene close to the viewer's time. It was meant to be dwelt on quietly and at close range. At some point it traveled south to Italy, where it left its mark on a marble relief carved for the cathedral in Palermo.