Christ as the Man of Sorrows

Christ, haggard and weeping, looms large within the narrow panel, the Crown of Thorns digging into his forehead and right eyebrow, its spines extending menacingly outward against the brilliant golden radiance behind him. Blood from his wounds runs through his hair and down the neckline of his cloak beneath the jewelled gold clasp, his bare chest flecked with small gashes; he raises his thin left arm to show the wrist bound with rope, tilting his head with gaze unfocused and mouth slightly ajar, one side of his cloak flying back as he gestures downward — perhaps toward an altar below, making the panel a devotional image for private prayer. Quentin Metsys, the Antwerp painter who helped carry the Flemish tradition of van Eyck and Memling into the sixteenth century, painted this moving Man of Sorrows about 1520 to 1525 in the intense, emotionally immediate style of his late years. The painting is held in the J. Paul Getty Museum.