Lot 1008 Dα

The Saviour crowned with thorns is presented against a blue green background. His head slightly inclined to the right he wears the traditionally purple mantle of the Passion. His face is marked by his weeping eyes, melancholic gaze, and parted lips. Holding both his hands with palms facing the viewer in the lower right corner of the composition he shows the stigmata in a gesture of blessing. Drops of blood flow from the five row crown of thorns mixing with tears along his cheeks.
Typical of the devotional painting this portrait-like representation of the suffering Christ was highly praised in Louvain at the turn of the 15th and 16th century. Sometimes associated with a Virgin at Prayer into a diptych, the composition of Christ alone was mass produced. The present version of fine technical quality is typologically close to the Christ Crowned with Thorns in the Bratislava Narodna Galerija (cf. V. Henderiks: Albrecht Bouts 1451/1455-1549, Brussels 2011, p. 398, no. 188).