The Dormition, last quarter 15th century

Hugo van der Goes painted this Dormition of the Virgin in the late fifteenth century, depicting Mary's peaceful death surrounded by the assembled apostles who had been miraculously summoned from their missionary journeys to witness her passage. Hugo van der Goes was the greatest painter of the generation after van Eyck, and his Dormition demonstrates the full range of his extraordinary gifts: the complex multi-figure composition managed with unprecedented psychological depth, each apostle individualized through precise physiognomic observation, the dying Virgin depicted with a humanity that was simultaneously sacred and profoundly moving. Hugo suffered a mental breakdown in the early 1480s, and his late works have been interpreted as expressions of the spiritual crisis that afflicted him. The work is now in the Groeningemuseum, Bruges.

The panel reflects the influence of van der Goes's emotional intensity and complex spatial arrangements, though the handling suggests a follower adapting the master's compositional innovations.