Figures from a Deposition

Description In these two groups from a carved altarpiece (with Walters 61.147), Mary swoons in a visual echo of the dead body of Christ - her suffering paralleling his suffering. The figures loosely derived from the great painter Rogier van der Weyden's famous altarpiece of the Deposition, of around 1442 for the Church of Our Lady Outside the Walls in Louvain (in present day Belgium). Van der Weyden set out to imitate the three-dimensional modeling and shallow box-like space of contemporary sculpted wooden altarpieces. The sculptural quality of his painted masterpiece made it in turn an especially effective model for sculptors.

Conservation

Date	Description	Narrative
5/01/1946	Treatment	cleaned
2/07/1969	Treatment	stabilized; other
1/01/1979	Examination	examined for condition
3/01/1979	Treatment	stabilized; cleaned
8/10/1979	Loan Consideration	examined for loan
12/17/1979	Examination	examined for condition; examined for loan

Exhibitions

• Rogier van der Weyden. Musée Communal de Bruxelles, Brussels. 1979.

Provenance Arnold Seligmann, Rey and Co., New York; Henry Walters, Baltimore, December 1919, by purchase; Walters Art Museum, 1931, by bequest.

Credit Acquired by Henry Walters, 1919