The Lamentation

The present panel is closely inspired by a Lamentation triptych by the Master of the Holy Blood, an anonymous painter who trained in Antwerp, possibly in the workshop of Quentin Massys, before establishing an independent practice in Bruges. He painted the Lamentation for the city’s Heilig-Bloedbasiliek (Basilica of the Holy Blood), which housed an important relic of Christ’s blood, allegedly collected by Joseph of Arimathea and bought back from the Holy Land to Bruges by Thierry of Alsace, Count of Flanders (c. 1099-1168) in the mid-twelfth century. The triptych explicitly demonstrates Massy’s influence, closely resembling the latter’s Altarpiece of the Lamentation (Antwerp, Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten) of circa 1507-8, painted for the altar of the carpenter’s guild in Antwerp cathedral. Based on this triptych, which became the keystone of the master’s oeuvre, Belgian art historian Georges Hulin de Loo (1862-1945) assigned a name to the anonymous painter: ‘Le Maître de Saint-Sang’, in whose circle the present work was most likely painted. It originally took the format of a triptych, and would have borne an even closer resemblance to the Master’s own Lamentation before it was worked up into a rectangle with painted additions.