The Virgin Mary Grieving, from a Crucifixion

The figure has been fully worked in the back, so was probably set up where it could be seen from any side, together with the crucified Christ and St. John, perhaps in the upper part of a small winged retable. The Madonna’s grief and sorrow are vividly conveyed in the individually and indeed sensuously rendered features of her broad face, and also in her overall posture, poised as if to step forward, the fingers of her right hand splayed. This figure was undoubtedly the work of a major sculptor. Scholars have ascribed the piece, which comes from the Sterzing area in South Tyrol, to Michael Pacher or his circle. However, when we consider Pacher’s retables, in particular that in St. Wolfgang in the Salzkammergut, the master’s share in the work cannot readily be distinguished from that of workshop pupils. The composition of the St. Wolfgang shrine is indissolubly dense. The grieving Virgin in Berlin, whose three-dimensional physicality is largely veiled, resembles that work in that it is conceived as a picture. We should not forget that Michael Pacher, whose knowledge included central perspective, was highly informed and saw himself primarily as a painter.