The depiction of tears in painting has been a frequent theme for centuries. Associated with religious, mythological or secular figures, tears symbolize human emotions, from sadness to joy to love, hate, gratitude or ingratitude …

1. The tears in painting, a symbol of pain or joy.
The depiction of tears in painting has been a frequent theme for centuries.
Associated with religious, mythological or secular figures,
tears symbolize human emotions, from sadness to joy to love, hate, gratitude or ingratitude …

2. The beauty of a tear …

3. A powerful scene ...
Jesus Christ on his agonizing journey to Calvary,
bearing the weight of the cross upon his shoulders.
The artist masterfully portrays not only Christ's physical pain
but also his unwavering determination to fulfill his divine mission.
Jesus addresses the viewer with a look of composed but intense pain,
His tear-filled eyes convey both physical agony and spiritual anguish.
Adding to the suffering a violent realism in this composition –
the guard grabbing grabs Christ's hair.
Lorenzo Lotto
Le Portement de croix
The Carrying of the Cross
1526
Musée du Louvre, Paris

6. Exhausted, Christ looks at the viewer, a tear runs down his cheek, yet his glance radiates dignity
as he fulfils his destiny.
Surrounding him is a multitude of flamboyantly dressed characters, now helping him by holding
up the cross, now punishing him with lashes, like the man dressed in red in the centre.
The soldier in front of Christ, with a harsh and enigmatic expression, also addresses the
spectator and displays a crescent moon on his shoulder, evoking the Muslim enemy.
In the background, a delicate landscape, in which the sorrowful group of the Virgin and St. John
stand out in the distance, and as a climax, the city of Jerusalem, treated as a Nordic city.
Hieronymus Bosch Jérôme Bosch
Christ Carrying the Cross
Le Portement de Croix
1505-1507
Royal Monastery of San Lorenzo de El Escorial, Royal Palace of Madrid

10. Christ has his eyes open and silently feels the bitterness of death.
Mary's face is one of desperate sadness, with large tears on her cheeks.
Mary Magdalene ... more human, more sensitive, more expressive,
She stands immobile.
Seated at the foot of the cross, turns her face towards the observer
as if she wanted to make him a witness to this unjust torture.
Jacob Jordaens
Crucifixion
1620
Musée des Beaux-Arts, Rennes

13. The tears at the foot of the cross ...
St. John and the three Mary's are overwhelmed with grief,
John supports Mary who has fainted.
Rogier van der Weyden
Seven Sacraments Altarpiece, Christ on the Cross and the Eucharist
Triptyque des Sept Sacrements, Crucifixion et le sacrement de l'Eucharistie
1445-1450
Musée royal des Beaux-Arts, Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Anvers

17. serenity and resignation ...
The central panel depicts a Pietà.
The Virgin's face is covered in tears,
echoing the drops of blood flowing down Christ's body.
The instruments of Christ's torture are depicted at either end of the panel:
the column on which he was scourged,
the spear with which the Roman soldier Longinus pierced his right side
after his death on the cross.
Maître du retable de Stauffenberg Master of the Stauffenberg Altarpiece
Stauffenberg Altarpiece, Descent from the cross
Retable Stauffenberg, Descente de croix
1450s
Musée d'Unterlinden, Colmar

19. The body of Jesus has already been removed from the Cross …
Dramatis Personae of the tragedy (from left to right):
Mary Cleophas (half-sister to the Virgin Mary),
John the Evangelist,
Mary Salome (in green, another half-sister of the Virgin Mary),
The Virgin Mary,
the corpse of Jesus Christ,
Nicodemus (in red),
a young man on the ladder,
Joseph of Arimathea (in field-of-cloth-of-gold robes, the most sumptuous costume),
the bearded man behind Joseph holding a jar,
Roger van der Weyden
The Descent from the Cross
La Descente de Croix
1435
Museo del Prado, Madrid

26. and ...
Mary Magdalene who adopts a dramatic pose on the right of the painting.
Fingers tightly clasped in a gesture of prayer, is about to fall at the feet of Christ, those same feet she had once so lovingly anointed
with oil and dried with her own hair, and that are now bloodied and dead.

28. The dead body of Christ carried by two men.
John the Evangelist, wears a red cloak,
Joseph of Arimathea, is dressed in a black doublet
Mary stands between them, bending over her dead son weeping and taking hold of his left arm.
On the left in the background, Mount Golgotha is depicted with the three crosses on it.
Quinten Massijs
The Lamentation of Christ
La lamentation du Christ
1515
Museum M Leuven, Leuven

32. The staid, restrained grief of the Mary and John ....
the rigid body of the Christ held and supported in the lap of his mother, Mary.
John the Evangelist in red
Mary Magdalene kneels, wrenching her hands in a gesture of grief.
Dirk Bouts
La Déploration du Christ
The Lamentation of Christ
1455-1460
Musée du Louvre, Paris

34. This work sparked controversy and confusion among viewers ...
angels dressed in red and orange (Bible verses describe angels dressed in white),
Jesus's spear wound is shown on the wrong side of his body (which Manet realized only
after he had submitted the painting to the Salon),
the weeping angel has the low look and is far from the Christ
But a new champion of Manet, Emile Zola, was particularly attracted by this work:
"Were are told that this Christ is not a Christ, and I admit that may be so.
As far as i am concerned it is a corpse, painted boldly and vigorously, with the light full on it.
I even like the angels in the background - children with great blue wings.“
Édouard Manet
Le Christ mort et les anges
The Dead Christ with Angels
1864
Metropolitan Museum of Art, Manhattan, New York

37. Christ is placed into the tomb.
He is being supported by those closest to him in life:
John the Evangelist, in a brilliant red robe, bears the weight of Christ,
Mary, the mother of James the Younger and Joseph, bows her head in sorrow,
Mary, the mother of Christ, looks heavenward for divine intercession
and in the background
Mary Magdalene cries
Peter Paul Rubens
The Entombment
La Mise du tombeau
1612
Getty Center, J. Paul Getty Trust, Los Angeles

40. sublime Mater Dolorosa ...
Set against a gold background signifying a timeless, heavenly realm,
the Virgin is an embodiment of compassion and an intercessor for humankind with Christ.
The Virgin is red-eyed and weeping.
Her grief was intended to inspire empathy in the viewer who is encouraged, like her,
to meditate upon the suffering of Christ at the Passion, his torture and crucifixion.
Dieric Bouts, Workshop of Atelier de
Mater Dolorosa
1480-1500
Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago

43. These are the tears of Christ's sorrow that flow like the blood from his crown of thorns …
Antonello di Messina painted one of the most expressive tragic figures: Christ at the Column.
Pain and ecstasy, an image of devotion calling for empathy and introspection
from the viewer - sinner.
Antonello da Messina
Christ at the Column
Le christ à la colonne
1476-1478
Musée du Louvre, Paris

45. A weeping woman, shown in profile, holds a large and intricately carved pot ...
is Saint Mary Magdalene, one of Christ’s followers,
identifiable from the pot of ointment with which she anointed Christ’s feet.
(The colorful clothes and expensive textiles allude to her sinful past …)
Master of the Magdalen Legend Maître de la Légende de Sainte Madeleine, Workshop of Atelier de
The Magdalen Weeping
Marie Madeleine en pleurs
1525
National Gallery, London

48. The Biblical king Saul suffers from bouts of depression
and is soothed by
the young David who plays the harp for him.
In a particularly striking detail, Saul dries his tears on the curtain.
But Saul will soon fly into a rage and throw his spear at David ...
Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn
Saul and David
Saül et David
1651-1654
Mauritshuis, The Hague

52. the Saint’s humanity …
Saint Peter, whose eyes well with tears due to his guilt in denying Christ during the Passion,
turns to heaven to beg for divine forgiveness.
The topic of the tears of Saint Peter would be used by theologians and moralists
in the Counter-Reformation as a way to approach the faithful, drawing parallels between
the saint’s weakness and that of mortal men through the offence committed.
El Greco
Les larmes de saint Pierre
The Tears of Saint Peter
1587-1596
Museo del Greco, Toledo

55. an angel banished from Paradise as punishment for his disobedience, his rebellion against God,
an angel cast out, humiliated,
an most beautiful angel, full of anger towards his creator ...
painted as a Greek hero, as a god with a perfect body,
sitting on dark rocks,
raises his head and looks at the land of his exile...
this defiant and at the same time tragic look with this tear that trembles under the eyelid
Like a rejected lover, who no longer expects to be loved,
he is inhabited by a suffering so great that it can only lead him to suicide or revenge.
And we understand that it is revenge that he has chosen ...
Alexandre Cabanel
L'Ange déchu
The Fallen Angel
1847
Musée Fabre, Montpellier

58. Faithful angels flee to heaven.
They abandon the one they admired.
They are faithful and pale.
As is often the case in painting, they have the insipidity and banality of the dominant morality. ..
Fallen Satan is more beautiful, suffering and alive, more fascinating than the flock of faithful angels who bleat!

60. Rembrandt, the emotion and light,
tears in the eyes in a magnificent painting ...
Lucretia has pierced her chest with her blade …
traces of blood on her gown,
the dagger in her hand,
an solemn and saddened gaze,
eyes moistened by tears,
she knows that she is about to die, and is preparing herself for that moment.
Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn
Lucretia
Lucrèce
1666
Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis

63. Niobe, the queen of Thebes, shelters her youngest daughter from Apollo and Diana‘s arrows ...
The queen’s thirteen other children lie wounded or dead in the painting’s foreground.
This violent scene, drawn from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, illustrates Niobe’s punishment for
boasting of her own power and fertility,
Apollo and Diana (Artemis) took it upon themselves to avenge their mother
by riddling Niobe's children with arrows.
Niobe's grief was so great that Zeus, granting her wishes,
transformed her into a rock from which a spring gushed, nourished by her abundant tears.
Jacques-Louis David
Diane et Apollon perçant de leurs flèches les enfants de Niobé
Diana and Apollo Killing Niobe's Children
1772
Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas

66. The depiction of married couples before their wedding night was very popular
in the Netherlands.
This painting is a satire on the subject.
The bride, depicted at an advanced age, is weeping bitterly, while the bridegroom
is trying to console her.
The bride is afraid of the wedding night ...
An allusion to the life of a married woman is the chamber pot offered by the young man.
The chamber pot was part of the marital bedroom (it is often found
in 17th-century Dutch genre paintings) and thus becomes, for the bride,
a vestige of the loss of innocence.
The wreath of ripe cherries on the old woman's head is an ironic mockery
of the image of the bride.
Jan Sanders van Hemessen
Plačící nevěsta
Tearful Bride
Mariée en larmes
1540
National Gallery Prague, Národní galerie v Praze, Prague

70. the moment when Ariane moves from one liaison to another ...
the sailboat of the fugitive in the distance,
the crown of stars symbolizing her union with Bacchus
the disappointment of seeing her lover run away,
the joy of finding a comforter
and
the expression on her face, where a smile and tears merge …
“He embraced her, and dried her tears with kisses, and said:
Together, let us seek the depths of the sky! ...” (Ovid, Fasti, 3, 505-516)
Antoine-Jean Gros
Bacchus et Ariane
Bacchus and Ariadne
1822
Musée des beaux-arts du Canada, Ottawa

73. o.esqsegues@gmail.com
The beauty of a tear … The tears in painting
La beauté d'une larme …La larme en peinture
La belleza de una lágrima ... Lágrimas en la pintura
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