A Popular Handbook to the National Gallery, Volume I, Foreign Schools / Including by Special Permission Notes Collected from the Works of John Ruskin

by Unknown

710. PORTRAIT OF A MONK.

Unknown[172] (Early Flemish: 15th century).

711. "MATER DOLOROSA."

712. "ECCE HOMO!"

Roger van der Weyden (Flemish: 1400-1464). See 664.

"It was a common custom with Roger's followers to copy single heads out of their master's large groups. Such single heads always have gold backgrounds, usually dotted over with little black dashes" (Conway's Early Flemish Artists, p. 275). These companion panels are perhaps instances, and the heads selected for reproduction are typical of the overstrained pathos of this school. Notice how prominently the tears in the sorrowing mother, and the blood and tears in the "Ecco Homo" are made to stand out.