Polyptych of Our Lady of Solitude

The Master of the Holy Blood was an anonymous Bruges painter of the early sixteenth century named after the altarpiece of the Holy Blood kept in Bruges's basilica. The Polyptych of Our Lady of Solitude depicts the Virgin of Solitude — Maria de la Soledad — the Marian title associated with Our Lady's seven sorrows and with Spanish devotional practice spreading through the Habsburg Low Countries after the marriage of Philip the Handsome to Juana of Castile in 1496. The commission reflects the Hispanicisation of Flemish devotional culture under Habsburg rule.

The Master of the Holy Blood uses the full Flemish oil technique in this polyptych, with deep spatial recession in the architectural settings and careful Flemish attention to reflective surfaces — the Virgin's tears, the metalwork of the crown, the sheen of silk vestments. His figure treatment is conservative, indebted to Gerard David's emotional restraint.