The dolorous three-figure arrangement of the Virgin Mary and Saint John flanking a crucified Christ was one of the most familiar religious settings in Western art, repeated with endless variations on every scale. This statuette originally formed part of a Crucifixion group that was fervently venerated as an object of private devotion, as the well-rubbed gilding attests.

If one stops short of assigning the model to the great Germain Pilon himself it is only because small bronzes by him are not known. The statuette certainly faithfully encapsulates his mellifluous style, the folds of the Virgin's mantle descending in generous curves much as in such Pilon monuments as the seated Virgin of Sorrows, a marble of about 1585 in the church of Saint-Paul-Saint-Louis, Paris, or the kneeling Cardinal de Birague, a bronze tomb figure of 1584–85, now in the Musée du Louvre.

A wood statuette with the same composition but with less Mannerism in detail is in the collection of the Hispanic Society of America, New York, and was heretofore considered Spanish or possibly Flemish.