Jesus is Mourned by Mary

(Mater Dolorosa by Luís de Morales - found here)

“Luís de Morales was also known as ‘II Divin’ (the Divine One) because his devotional paintings, such as Mater Dolorosa, were so pious and spiritually affecting.

The colours de Morales has used here are extraordinarily subtle — the faintest of blues and purples, bleached yellows, and an almost translucent white — all set against a dark, sombre background that reinforces the idea of human tragedy.

His depiction of Mary is peculiar to him: the face is exceptionally long and thin, as if worn down by sorrows; the cheeks are hollowed; and the eyes are deeply recessed and shadowed. Mary’s beauty is indestructible, but pain has diminished it.

Perhaps this is clearest in the anguished hands, which are as expressive of grief as the face itself. The long, bony fingers are thrust out at us with an almost surrealistic passion, bringing to mind the legs of a frantic crab or some other such scurrying creature. Those anxious fingers speak more loudly of her inner tension than the quivering lips or the hunched and tense shoulders. While her hands are held towards us, Mary looks away, her eyes cast down to the dead son that we cannot see.

Apart from those tensely clenched fingers, Mary’s emotions make no overt display. This stillness — this compressed intensity — is far more evocative of grief than the melodramatics of de Morales’s Italian contemporaries. Here is a woman who is almost incandescent with her sorrow.”

~Wendy Beckett