Crying over the dead Christ

In this composition Christ is represented in the foreground, lying dead on the ground on a sheet with his head lying on the Virgin’s lap. At his side St. John and Mary Magdalene contemplate him rolled up. The figures of the Virgin and St. John are cut out before the rock of Calvary that, round and occupying the middle plane, monopolizes the landscape in the background. Behind it, two distant perspectives open up in which trees, water and mountains are integrated into a landscape diluted in blue tones. The attribution to Hugo van der Goes, weakly supported by Mª Elena Gómez-Moreno, has been supported by Elisa Bermejo and more recently by Pilar Silva Maroto. The existence of several repentances, visible with infrared rays, induce to consider it original. However, there are authors who consider it to be a very faithful copy of the original -which they suppose to be lost- by van der Goes, which preserves the primitive frame with lateral hooks that denote its belonging to a triptych. It was bought in Gradada at the beginning of the 20th century from a private individual of whom we have no data. / Extracted from: A.A.V.V.: Instituto Gómez-Moreno (catalog). Granada, 1992, p. 114.