[4][5] The subject, which commemorates the passion and death of Christ, arose in Byzantine art of the 11th century[6] and would have served as a devotional object for focused contemplation, likely inspired by the Meditationes of the Pseudo-Bonaventura.

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.

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.

[3][4] At least five copies of the Bouts treatment of the subject exist, listed in catalogs by Max Friedländer and Wolfgang Schoene,[10] including pictures now in the Städel Museum[12] and the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza.