At the centre lies the Virgin Mary on her deathbed, surrounded by the 12 apostles. Their intense grief can be seen on their faces. In front, John the Evangelist looks at us. Peter, wearing white priestly garb, administers the last sacraments to Mary. Above them, Christ appears, among angels, bathed in a supernatural light. The wounds on his hands show that he is the Saviour.
A sorrowful scene is playing out in this poignant, haunting panel by Hugo van der Goes. Look at the postures, hands and facial expressions of the twelve men who have gathered at Mary’s deathbed in a rather plain interior. Each figure is coming to terms with the event in his own way. These are Christ’s twelve apostles, his first pupils.
We recognise two of them: John is seated in the foreground holding a book. Indeed, John wrote one of the four gospels. The upright man in the white cassock is Peter. He is preparing to administer the last rites to the dying, pallid Mary, who is clad in a bright blue gown.
This all takes place on an earthly level. Up above, Mary’s son Jesus Christ miraculously appears, flanked by angels. His apparition is the source of the supernatural, divine light. Christ will receive Mary’s soul with open arms. At the same time, he displays the wounds on his hands sustained during his crucifixion. Jesus has conquered death!
A tableau like this aims to involve us, the viewers, in what we are seeing. We are invited to literally suffer alongside the figures in the depiction. In Van der Goes’ time, this empathetic response was a key spiritual movement in the church, and one with which the painter himself was closely aligned. Van der Goes became a lay brother in a Brussels monastery. The movement was known as Modern Devotion.
Would you like to find out more about the museum’s Flemish Primitives collection? Then press the green button, if you didn’t already do so when looking at Jan van Eyck’s work.