Christ in the house of the Pharisee Simon

This Christ in the House of Simon at the Gemäldegalerie Berlin, dating to around 1460, depicts the dinner at which Mary Magdalene washes Christ's feet with her tears and anoints them with precious ointment—one of the Gospel's most psychologically complex scenes. The host Simon the Pharisee doubts Christ's spiritual authority, while Mary's extravagant devotion provokes discussion of sin, forgiveness, and love. Bouts renders the scene with characteristic attention to interior space, architectural detail, and the quiet drama of gesture. The Berlin holding reflects the systematic acquisition of early Netherlandish painting by German museums in the nineteenth century, when Bouts's reputation was being reconstructed by scholarly connoisseurship.

The interior space is constructed with Bouts's characteristic use of precise linear perspective, the tiled floor and architectural elements creating a mathematically coherent space that was remarkably advanced for mid-fifteenth-century Netherlandish painting.