Christ

Christ gazes directly out at us from this small panel. Raising his right hand in blessing, he holds in his left hand a glass or crystal orb, decorated with gold bands set with pearls. On top of the orb is a jewelled gold cross and Christ wears a brooch set with precious stones.This painting was the left-hand part of a diptych. Although this panel and another, The Virgin, are regarded as a diptych, they were adapted for this use and not originally made to go together. Small diptychs such as this may well have been used for private devotional meditation. Close observation reveals the fronts of three gabled houses reflected in the orb; the artist is cleverly suggesting the earthly realm of the Renaissance viewer.This is not the suffering Christ of the Passion (as in Christ Crowned with Thorns by Dirk Bouts) but Christ as Salvator Mundi (‘Saviour of the World’); the praying Virgin is interceding with him on behalf of sinful humanity. Massys must have been familiar with similar diptychs showing the suffering Christ as the ‘Man of Sorrows’ and the Virgin as the Mater Dolorosa, many of which were produced in the workshops of Dirk Bouts and Albrecht Bouts. This painting may rather be placed in the tradition of the Virgin and God the Father in the Ghent Altarpiece by Hubert and Jan van Eyck (St Bavo’s Cathedral, Ghent), a tradition continued by Rogier van der Weyden in his Braque Triptych (Louvre, Paris) and in various paintings by Hans Memling and his followers.