PROVENANCE: Kleinberger Galleries, New York, 1969; BJU, 1969.

Abraham Janssens began his artistic training with Jan Snellinck in Antwerp but soon traveled to Italy to further his opportunities, training, and career. After a few years, he returned to Antwerp and gained important commissions and status. His art reveals the influences of earlier Flemish and Italian Mannerists as well as of Caravaggio, but the sculptural quality of his figures spans his career. After returning to Antwerp in 1608, Rubens soon eclipsed Janssens who eventually conformed his art to the prevailing Rubenesque taste. In spite of the inevitable dominance of Rubens, Janssens' style best represents the classical strain of art present in Antwerp during the first decades of the 17th century.

This altarpiece, only one of a few paintings where Janssens clearly experiments with the Caravaggesque manner, stands today as a rare and important early example of the movement in the southern Netherlands . Janssens retains his personal hallmarks: the emphatic sculptural modeling of the figure of Christ and the almost caricature quality of the facial types. However, the strong dramatic lighting and bare background draw their immediate origins from Caravaggio. Like Baglione, Janssens draws inspiration from the master, but tempers the work with a classical and highly personal interpretation. Some of his pupils, including Theodoor Rombouts and Gerard Seghers, assumed the Caravaggesque style that Janssens introduced into Antwerp.

The iconography in this work identifies it as a Lamentation rather than a Deposition (the removal of Christ from the cross), a Pietà (Mary holding and mourning over Christ's body) or an Entombment (the placing of Christ's body in the tomb). The extra-biblical subject probably gained prominence during the plague-ridden Middle Ages. With whole communities grieving over the loss of life, artists transferred the image of groups of mourners to the death of Christ. Thus, a Lamentation emphasizes a group of people grieving over Christ, usually with his mother, Mary, and others mentioned in the biblical text.