Aertsen, Pieter

Scenes from the Life of an Unidentified Bishop Saint

c. 1560; Oil on wood, 75 x 56 cm; National Gallery, London; L578; On loan from a private collection

Three scenes are included in the picture, in each of which the bishop is shown doing good works. In the foreground he gives money to a beggar, in the background on the left he heals a blind man. In the corresponding feast scene on the right, he prepares to wash a poor man, perhaps the same man who appears in the foreground.

It has been suggested that the bishop might be Saint Albinus, Bishop of Angers from 529, who was a patron saint of the blind. The picture was probably painted as a single devotional work, rather than as part of an altarpiece, and dates from about 1560, when Aertsen had moved from Antwerp to Amsterdam.