Man of Sorrows

Maarten van Heemskerck's Man of Sorrows from 1532 depicts the suffering Christ as an object of devotional contemplation. Painted before van Heemskerck's transformative journey to Rome, this work shows his early Dutch style before it was profoundly altered by his encounter with Michelangelo's art. The Man of Sorrows, a devotional image of the suffering Christ displaying his wounds, was a favorite subject in Northern European art for its capacity to inspire empathy and meditation on Christ's sacrificial suffering.

The pre-Italian style shows a more traditionally Northern approach with precise drawing and restrained coloring, before the artist's later adoption of Italianate muscular forms and dramatic foreshortening.