08/10/2026
Can Rogier paint grief better than any other Renaissance artist?
Look at how he builds a single tear.
A darker glaze first to give the tear weight and a shadow edge. This makes it sit on the skin rather than within it.
Then one small stroke of pure white, off-centre, for the highlight. That’s it.
It’s the same trick used for pearls and glass elsewhere in the period — a few careful strokes reading as a small reflective sphere.
And there is so much restraint - not every face is wet. A few tears, placed exactly right, say more than a whole group of people crying would.
My goodness if there was ever an artist who understood how to depict grief, it was Rogier.
I’ll explore this painting in detail on 14 October - the Prado “Deposition”. Arguably the most influential painting of the whole 15th century.
