La Vierge de douleur

This Virgin of Sorrows at the Louvre, dating to around 1462, depicts the Mater Dolorosa in a format designed for intimate devotional contemplation—the grieving mother of Christ rendered with sufficient individuality to be a specific person and sufficient universality to represent all maternal grief. The half-length format, concentrating attention on the face and folded hands, was developed in Flemish devotional painting for works designed for private prayer. Bouts's characteristic restraint—sorrow present but controlled, the face composed in grief rather than distorted by it—reflects his theological sensibility: suffering endured with dignity rather than expressed in Expressionistic excess.

The Virgin's grief is expressed with extraordinary subtlety, Bouts's precise rendering of the slightly reddened eyes and compressed lips creating an image of sorrow that is all the more affecting for its restraint.