Mater Dolorosa (Sorrowing Virgin)

This grieving Madonna likely originally faced another panel depicting a similarly sorrowful Christ crowned with thorns. Portable devotional diptychs such as these were extremely popular in Northern Europe, and workshops like that of artist Dieric Bouts had a system for meeting this demand. A master artist’s design book, a closely guarded tool of the workshop, contained drawings that could be transferred by assistants directly onto the surface of a panel. The assistants could use the same drawing multiple times, as they did for this panel and others of the same subject, allowing for efficient production while maintaining the quality of the master’s design.