MARY, MOTHER OF OUR REDEEMER

 Finally, we come to our last Mary, the Mother of our Savior. She has fainted and her body takes the same shape as her son. It is a visual artist’s way to illustrate how Mary was so configured to Christ that she united herself to His passion. Hence her grief is beyond measure.  Arnold of Chartres said, “The wills of Christ and of Mary were then united, so that both offered the same holocaust. In this way she produced with Him the one effect, the salvation of the world.”

The work is unique for this period because of Mary's swoon. Her collapse echoes the pose of her Son's. 

This pose was entirely new for Early Netherlandish art. The sentiment, however, is a direct reflection of the mystical devotion expressed by Thomas à Kempis' popular treatise  "The Imitation of Christ", first published in 1418. The text, just as the image here, invites the reader or viewer to personally identify with the suffering of Christ and Mary. 

I am reminded of one of my favorite images in art, that of Matthias Grunewald's Mother of Jesus, in his Isenheim Altarpiece now in Colmar, France (which I saw several times when living in Germany).  Here Mary also is swooning with a  deathly  pallor.  It was painted almost one hundred years after Rogier's Deposition.

Grunewald

The doctrines of Denis the Carthusian also emphasized the significance of the Virgin Mary and her belief in Christ at the moment of his death. Denis expresses the conviction that the Virgin Mary was near death when Christ gave up his spirit and Rogier's  painting powerfully conveys this idea.  

Note the pallor of her skin against the bluest of garments.  This white contrasts sharply with the lilac of her lips, the washed-out pink of her eyes as they roll backwards. Five tears trickle down her face, one about to drop off her pale chin.

Was Rogier aware of a sequence of grief when he created his masterpiece?  The younger Mary Salome has an almost quiet grief, while the older Mary Clopas sobs into a cloth. Both stand upright, while the third  Mary, (Magdelene) is almost prostrate with sorrow  and the sorrowful Mother Mary  has collapsed with only St. John and her younger sister holding her up.  In her fall, her body takes on the same shape as her Son's, implying that her suffering is close to His. We know Mary’s own suffering for her Son makes her co-redemptrix. 

(The title “co-redemptrix” is not a claim to equality with Jesus, but an obedient and free cooperation with Him in suffering. Mary is “co-redemptrix” because of her unique maternity. She holds the title for all of us since she is the Mother of all.)