Follower of Rogier van der Weyden

Panel is cradled. there is a vertical panel join which runs from top to bottom through the face of bearded figure on right, down through Christ's torso, thigh and right hand, and through Virgin's right hand. overall, there is good retention of the paint surface. there is an old, filled scratch at upper right which runs from ladder into figure at right. some other old fills can be seen in brown background. ultraviolet light shows retouching along join and scratch mentioned above. there are some other very small retouches on face and drapery of figure of St. John at left; a larger area on cheek of Virgin; on arm and other tiny ones on body of Christ; and some on coat of bearded figure. others scattered here and there in background. painting has not been attended to in a long time and would benefit from a re-addressing of some of the older restorations which could be more skillfully done. In a plain black wood frame.
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The present work derives from a lost original by Rogier van der Weyden. It is known in many variants, all of which have been ascribed to later, mostly sixteenth-century followers of van der Weyden, or in certain cases to the Master of the Holy Blood (active circa 1530).¹ One such example of the latter type can be found today in the central panel of a triptych in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (acc. no. 17.187a-c). Dirk de Vos argues that no extant fifteenth-century examples of the present work exist, making an identification of a prime composition from Rogier's lifetime increasingly difficult.²  He points to two compositional types from which an original may be based. The first being the present type, and a second slightly reduced composition with only three figures, of which only ten known copies exist.³  Despite the fact that most scholars identify the present composition as the primary type from which an autograph version may have existed, De Vos places the reduced version ahead of the present type in its likelihood of repeating an original. This argument, however, is difficult to support given the limited number of examples available to scholars.

1. For a more complete list of variants, see M.J. Friedländer, Early Netherlandish Painting, Leiden 1971, vol. II, pp, 78-80, plates 111-12.
2. D. de Vos, Rogier van der Weyden, Antwerp 1999, pp. 368-9.
3. Ibid. See fig. B11A.