Fragment from Christ Carrying the Cross: Mourning Virgin

These two fragments are all that remain of a painting of Christ carrying the Cross by Jean Hey, the leading painter working in France at the end of the 15th century. Saint John the Evangelist was acquired by the Chicago collector Martin Ryerson in the 1890s; Mourning Virgin, recently identified as a fragment of the same work, was acquired in 2004. Technical examination showed traces of the cross and the head of Christ on both fragments and also provided evidence to connect them to another panel in Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow, depicting a saint and donor. These fragments were thus formerly part of an intensely emotional image of Christ’s road to Calvary, which would have formed the left half of a diptych, or portable folding altarpiece, with the representation of the donor in prayer on the right.