The painting, as its size suggests, was intended for private devotion and in ancient times reached the Sacro Monte di Varallo and then merged into the museum's collections at the end of the nineteenth century. Christ is depicted as a Man of Sorrows , with a purple cloak, crowned with thorns, with his hands crossed in front of his chest and his eyes open, according to the recurring iconography in the Germanic context. The composition, considered almost an invention by Dieric Bouts (c.1415 - 1475), includes the Mater dolorosa next to Christ, to compose a diptych: the painted frame that frames the Christ, with two intertwined acanthus leaves and a resting shield on a slender column, it certainly continued in the lost pendant with the Virgin, whose shadow remains next to the right side of Jesus. The restoration of the panel has clarified the posteriority of the current wooden frame, perhaps made at the time of the dismemberment of the original diptych.