Meditationes 1473

This woodcut illustration appears in Johannes de Turrecremata's *Meditationes*, printed around 1479. We see Christ exiting a doorway on the left as a group of women, including the Virgin Mary, look on with distress. Note the motif of the doorway, a threshold brimming with symbolic weight. Doorways, appearing across cultures from ancient Egyptian tombs to Renaissance paintings, represent transitions – passages between worlds, states of being, or stages of life. Here, the doorway marks Christ's departure toward his crucifixion, a passage from life to death. The Virgin Mary is often depicted with a downcast gaze, a gesture of mourning, which we see here repeated by the women surrounding her. This gesture echoes across time, seen in ancient sculptures of grieving figures to modern-day expressions of sorrow. This shared iconography taps into a collective memory of grief, engaging us on a profound level. The cyclical recurrence of these symbols – the doorway, the gaze – reflects a continuity of human experience. They resurface, evolve, and acquire new layers of meaning, continually engaging and moving us across the ages.