# Diptych with Christ and the Mater Dolorosa [View the canonical artwork record]() ## Artwork - Artist: [HOLBEIN, Hans the Younger]() - Date: 1501-1550 - Technique: Limewood, 29 x 20 cm \(each panel\) ## Commentary Diptych with Christ and the Mater Dolorosa c. 1520 Limewood, 29 x 20 cm \(each panel\) Kunstmuseum, Öffentliche Kunstsammlung, Basel Jesus sits exhausted on the plinth of an aedicula decorated in the style of the Italian Renaissance. In contrast to His strong, muscular body, Jesus' face is ravaged by the strains of the Passion, arousing pity in the beholder, who is also summoned to devotion by Mary's gesture towards her Son and by her pain-stricken gaze. Though Jesus wears a large crown of thorns, indicating that the Via Crucis \(the Way of the Cross\) has begun, the wounds are absent, so that the Crucifixion still lies in the future; he is not yet the Man of Sorrows. The architecture indicates Pilate's palace. Holbein has removed the figures from the scenic setting of the Biblical story and turned the tortured Christ into the main figure of a devotional picture. ## Related artworks - [Adam and Eve]() - [Apollo and the Muses on Parnassus]() - [Charitas]() - [Charles Brandon]() - [Christ as the True Light]() - [Christina of Denmark, Ducchess of Milan \(detail\)]() - [Christina of Denmark, Ducchess of Milan]() - [Courtier of Henry VIII and his Wife]() - [Darmstadt Madonna \(detail\)]() - [Darmstadt Madonna \(detail\)]() - [Darmstadt Madonna \(detail\)]() - [Darmstadt Madonna \(detail\)]() ## Attribution [Web Gallery of Art]()