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The Lamentation
Unknown (Antwerp) · c. 1515-1520
The dead Christ lies across the lap of his mother, surrounded by mourners whose faces and hands are turned in grief. Half a metre wide and carved in oak, the group was one scene of a large altarpiece of the Passion, one of the carved and painted retables that the workshops of Antwerp produced by the hundred for churches across northern Europe. The original paint and gilding survive, and the tiny scale of the figures rewards a close look: the crumpled loincloth, the individual tears, the elaborate headdresses of the holy women.
On the heads of the Virgin and of Saint John a small stamped hand can be found. That was the guarantee mark of the city of Antwerp, punched into the wood to certify that the carving met the standards of the guild, and it dates the work to the years around fifteen fifteen to fifteen twenty. The origin of the altarpiece is unknown. The group belonged to Charles de Marsy, a collector from Picardy, whose bequest brought it to the Louvre in 1902; it was transferred from the department of decorative arts to that of sculpture in 1921.
Did You Know? A tiny stamped hand on two of the figures' heads is the quality mark of the Antwerp carvers' guild.
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