Scenes from the Passion of Christ

The painting was commissioned by Tommaso Portinari, an Italian banker based in Bruges, who is depicted in a donor portrait kneeling and praying in the lower left corner, with his wife, Maria Baroncelli, in a similar attitude in the lower right corner.

It was not catalogued in Portinari's belongings when he died in 1501, and is thought to have been moved from Bruges to Florence between 1510 and 1520.

The scenes of the Passion start in the distance at the top left with Jesus's entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, passes through the town and out again to the bottom left to the Garden of Gethsemane, through the Passion scenes in the centre of the city (judgment of Pilate, the Flagellation of Jesus, Crowning with Thorns, Ecce Homo), then follows the procession of the cross back out of the city to the bottom right, then up to the top for the crucifixion, and ending in the distance at the top right with the appearances at Emmaus and Galilee.

The scenes are distributed in and around an idealized Jerusalem, depicted as a walled medieval city with exotic towers topped by domes.

In order, the scenes are: Memling used a similar narrative style for his later Advent and Triumph of Christ (also known as Seven Joys of the Virgin) (1480), made for the altar of the Tanners' guild in Our Lady's Church in Bruges but now held by the Alte Pinakothek in Munich.