Isenbrant is believed to have been a pupil of the Bruges master Gerard David; and the progenitor for this panel is likely to be David’s Lamentation of Christ, now in the National Gallery in London and dated between 1515 and the artist’s death in 1523, which incorporates the same figures in a markedly similar narrative arrangement. The scene is the aftermath of Christ’s Crucifixion. Rising above Golgotha’s horizon are three Tau-shaped crosses. The roughly-hewn thieves’ crosses flank a more neatly carpentered central cross constructed from planed planks of timber and surmounted by a small white titulus. Two men remove ladders, with which they have evidently just taken Christ’s body down from the now empty cross. In front of them are three female figures walking away from the scene. The central figure is the Virgin, clothed in a blue mantle over a dress of the same fabric. She is accompanied by two other women, one of whom wears her hair loose and must therefore be the reformed Mary Magdalene. They walk along a bare stone path towards the focus of the composition, the large, foregrounded figures of Saint John, clothed entirely in red, and the Virgin, appearing in the same blue mantle and dress. Together they cradle the dead body of Christ and lay it to rest on a winding sheet of pure, white cloth. Christ’s head lolls awkwardly to one side, with John’s hands supporting. Both John and the Virgin are plainly in distress. They lean forwards together over the body of Mary’s son, offering two modes of grief as they do so: the Virgin looks away from the viewer and directly at Christ’s face, their connection intact even after death. John is at a subtle and respectful remove, the supporting companion who looks out towards us as if to invite our co-suffering.
