Christ taking leave of his Mother

Christ taking leave of his Mother is a subject in Christian art, most commonly found in Northern art of the 15th and 16th centuries. Christ says farewell to his mother Mary, often blessing her, before leaving for his final journey to Jerusalem, which he knows will lead to his Passion and death; indeed this scene marks the beginning of his Passion. In early versions just these two figures are usually shown, at half-length or less.

After Dürer the subject usually has a landscape setting and includes attendants (usually the Three Marys) to Mary, who often swoons with distress and is held by them. Saints Peter, John the Evangelist, Mary Magdalen and other apostles may be shown. It is probably more common in prints than paintings.

The subject does not illustrate any Biblical passage, but derives from one of the Pseudo-Bonaventura's "Meditations on the life of Christ" (1308), and the Marienleben of Philipp the Carthusian (about 1330). The scene became used in Passion plays and other religious dramas. It may be depicted in Christ Blessing with the Virgin in Prayer, a work by Robert Campin of the early 15th century (Philadelphia), and is painted several times by Gerard David at the end of the century (Dublin, Basel, Munich, Metropolitan New York); many lesser artists were painting the subject by then, especially in Germany.

Awareness of the subject was further spread by prints, by Albrecht Dürer in his very popular woodcut series the on the Life of the Virgin (ca. 1505), and again in his woodcut Passion series (1509), and also by Lucas van Leyden. As was by then often the case, many provincial painters used the compositions of the prints directly as a basis for their paintings, for example a version from his eponymous altarpiece by the Nuremberg painter known as the "Master of the Schwabach Altarpiece"(1506, Compton Verney House), who uses his fellow-townsman Dürer.

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