Colijn de Coter

Colijn de Coter was a Brussels painter of altarpieces working around 1500 in the tradition of Rogier van der Weyden. His figures are long and elegant, with grave, sad faces and heavy, sharply folded draperies, set against gold or landscape backgrounds.

He was active in Brussels and Antwerp from about 1480 to 1525, and ran a busy workshop producing altarpieces for churches in the Low Countries and abroad. Works attributed to him include St Luke Painting the Virgin in Vieure in France, an altarpiece of the Trinity in the Louvre and The Lamentation of Christ in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.

His Christ as the Man of Sorrows is typical of the devotional images he made for private prayer: a close, still figure meant to be contemplated. Look at the careful gradations of flesh and the sharp crinkled folds in the cloth.