Maria met volgelingen met op de achtergrond Golgotha en het gesloten graf van Christus (linkerluik); Maria in gebed met boven haar engelen met de Arma Christi, Christus betreedt het huis van Maria en

Aelbrecht Bouts was the son of Dieric Bouts the Elder, who had established the Leuven school of Flemish painting in the third quarter of the fifteenth century. This double panel (c. 1500) showing Mary with followers outside Golgotha, and Mary in prayer with the Arma Christi and scenes of Christ entering Mary's house, belongs to a tradition of Marian devotional diptychs produced in Leuven for private patrons. The Arma Christi — the instruments of the Passion — were popular in private devotional contexts because they invited meditation on Christ's suffering as a personal act of piety. Aelbrecht maintained his father's studio into the early sixteenth century, sustaining the Bouts workshop tradition with quality if not innovation.

Aelbrecht Bouts works with the Leuven workshop's signature color qualities: cool blue tonalities, precise linear contours, and a characteristic restraint in emotional expression that gives his figures a dignified gravity. The Arma Christi panel organizes the Passion instruments as a heraldic display around the praying Virgin — cross, lance, crown of thorns, nails — rendered with the object-specificity of Flemish still-life attention. Both panels show the technically accomplished oil glazing of a well-trained workshop.