Gerard David, 'Lamentation', 1515-23

Christ’s body has just been brought down from the Cross and is being prepared for burial. The three large nails removed from his hands and feet lie below the ladder, and the crown of thorns is below the jug on the left. Saint John the Evangelist supports the body on its shroud, and the Virgin Mary embraces her son tenderly. On the right, Mary Magdalene anoints Christ’s feet with ointment from a small pot – her attribute. She is also identified by the inscription on her headdress (‘M.A.M.A’, standing for Maria Magdalena), and her action, recalling how she previously anointed his feet at Bethany.

Another woman washes Christ’s wounds with water from a brass basin, a second supports the Virgin and a third looks on sadly. The men entering through a gate on the right are the two secret Jewish converts to Christianity: Nicodemus, who brought spices to embalm Christ’s body, and Joseph of Arimathea, who gained permission to bury him after the Crucifixion. According to the Gospel of John, Christ was crucified in a garden in which there was an unused tomb – presumably the area fenced in by wooden palings here, with the open door of a rock tomb beyond.

The Lamentation is not included in the biblical account of the Crucifixion, but was found in the apocryphal gospels and described in detail in medieval devotional literature. It became very popular in northern European art in the later Middle Ages. This painting most likely formed one of a series of the life of Christ painted by David as part of polyptych (a multi-panelled altarpiece); the Adoration of the Kings very probably comes from the same altarpiece.

David often reused his own ideas and motifs and his followers, perhaps working from copies of his patterns, continued to repeat his compositions and to vary them by recombining different elements. The figures of Christ and the Virgin come ultimately from a design by Rogier van der Weyden, while Mary Magdalene’s head and her headdress recall David’s The Virgin and Child with Saints and Donor. The composition is related to that of a damaged Lamentation (Santa Barbara, California), which is sometimes given to David himself, and is certainly from his immediate circle.

When this painting was planned, the same design that served for the Santa Barbara Lamentation may have been used, together with pattern drawings of heads, draperies and hands. The composition is so well worked out that it would seem to have been conceived by David himself. However, there are many differences between the underdrawing and the final painted version. This suggests that some parts of the scene (in particular the woman at the far left) might have been sketched in by assistants following an initial design by David, who would then have corrected and altered them during the course of painting.