In this artwork, how is the Composition discussed?
The subject, which commemorates the passion and death of Christ, arose in Byzantine art of the 11th century and would have served as a devotional object for focused contemplation, likely inspired by the Meditationes of the Pseudo-Bonaventura. The scene had become a popular one for artists and patrons in northern continental Europe by the 15th century.The rectangular panel shows the nearly naked, rigid body of the deceased Christ on a diagonal, held and supported in the lap of his mother, Mary. Both are attended by the figure of John the Evangelist in red, offering a white linen cloth to support Christ's head, to Mary's proper left. Mary Magdalene kneels in the middle ground, wrenching her hands in a gesture of grief, after a motif from Rogier van der Weyden's Descent from the Cross. A wooden tau cross stands off center and in the middle ground.  A landscape of countryside around an imaginary Jerusalem recedes in the background with atmospheric perspective, under a blue and white sky. Details of carefully observed vegetation, likely after the manner of Jan van Eyck, appear in the lower foreground and in the distant background.
The Bouts Lamentation shows marked stylistic and compositional debt to Van der Weyden, especially in the emotion expressed by the Magdalene. The staid, restrained grief of the Mary and John bespeaks a signature Bouts style, where "time appears to be suspended in a moment of intense emotion, but one that is expressed calmly." The rendering of John's hair and face recall that of the figure of John in Bouts' Altarpiece of the Holy Sacrament, made in the mid- to late-1640s.
landscape continental Europe Mary Altarpiece of the Holy Sacrament passion Jerusalem Rogier van der Weyden tau cross Pseudo-Bonaventura Byzantine art atmospheric perspective