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The Martyrdom of Saint Erasmus by Dieric Bouts

The Martyrdom of Saint Erasmus by Dieric Bouts is a triptych panel painting in , in the Saint Peter's church in Leuven, Belgium. The triptych was probably made around 1464.

DO NOT USE: SEE SANDBOX BOUTS 2

The torture and of Saint Erasmus is depicted on the center panel of the triptych. He was the patron saint of the skippers and in the Netherlands in particular of the Baltic seafarers. His attribute was the capstan, a winch on which a ship's anchor chains were lowered and hoisted.

The historian Johan Huizinga calls the composition clumsy and inept, and the scene "dermwinderken" ("gut-wrenching"), because the central panel shows how, according to legend, the intestines of Saint Erasmus were extracted from his body with the help of a windlass. As a result, from the fifteenth century the saint was invoked against stomach diseases. Erasmus undergoes this without betraying any emotion; the executioners carry out their duties seriously and Emperor Diocletian and his three companions, who attend the event, appear to be in a meditative state just as the saints on the side panels.

On the side panels two persons are depicted, on the left is the Church Father Jerome and on the right is Bernard of Clairvaux, the founder of the Cistercian Order. They are, respectively, depicted with a lion <s>who has rid Jerome of a thorn in his leg<s>; WHAT? DOUBLE CHECK THIS and a devil who lies at the feet of Bernard and symbolizes the torments that the saint has resisted. These two men have virtually no link with the subject of the central panel. Nevertheless, they have been brought together with the other figures in one landscape that runs through the panels.

LANDSCAPE CONTINUITY - quote Lynn Jacobs

Instead of bringing the narrative aspects and horror of the legend of Saint Erasmus to the fore, Bouts sought to emphasize the holiness of Erasmus, Jerome and Bernard and to present them as protectors and as objects of devotion. Some see the image of the three saints as a tribute to the three forms of holiness: Erasmus, the martyr, Jerome, the scholar, and Bernard, the mystic.

INSCRIPTION on frame and dating - SEE LYNN JACOBS book or ART BULLETIN article.

Barling, Sophie. “It's one of the masterworks of Flemish painting” Interview by Peter Carpreau. Apollo, 191, no. 682 (January 2020).

USE THIS FROM VLAAMSE PRIMITIVEN

Erasmus, bishop of Antioch (+303) lays stretched out on the martyr board, with his head turned to the left. His feet are bound together and his hands are secured near his body on the plank. He is only wearing a white loincloth. His black garment lies folded up under his head. On the ground to the left, stands his bishop’s miter. At the head and foot of the torture bed, two executioners man the wheel axe, by which the intestines of the martyr are extracted from his body. Central on the middle panel, a judge stands observing the faces. Behind him stand three men who each look in a different direction. The man on the left has turned himself a quarter turn away from the events. The tableau is situated in a vast landscape, flanked on the left and right by rocky outcrops.

On the left panel, Saint Hieronymus is portrayed as a Cardinal. He wears the red Cardinal’s vestments and red hat. He holds a book and a cross staff and at his feet sits the lion, his usual companion. According to the legend, he freed the lion of a thorn in his paw, when he still lived as a hermit in Antioch. The landscape in which he stands is extended from that of the middle panel. He looks on as Erasmus is martyred.

On the right panel, Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, clothed in a white Cistercian habit with a black scapular over it and a black cap. On his head he wears a red head covering. He holds onto a book in his left hand and a bishop’s staff in the right. At his feet lies a subdued devil in chains, an indication towards his triumph over temptation. Also on this panel the landscape from the middle panel runs through and the saint looks on at the martyring of Erasmus.

OR from THE INDEPENDENT:

The martyr himself is pinioned, but passive. He lies there, stripped to a cloth, his bishop's mitre set on the ground next to him, his face slightly hardened, his body relaxed and unresponding. Even his flesh is without any natural resistance. From a neat opening in his belly, a thin line of innards is extracted bloodlessly and vertically from the horizontal man, with no more strain than drawing a thread through a needle.

— Tom Lubbock, The Independent

Iconography

Erasmus of Formia, or Saint Elmo

saints “anachronistically attending the same event JACOBS page 133t. + Maryan Ainsworth cited on p. 125 of Jacobs

Placement and function

ambulatory adorned the chapel of the Brotherhood in the ambulatory of the church

collegiate church

side panels hinged and closer, enclosing both scene and viewer per

explain relationship to M Leuven

list exhibitions

Patronage, commission and authorship

WHERE DID THIS DISAPPEAR to?

It is known that the Brotherhood of the Holy Sacrament certainly owned the work in 1535. Whether they had given the order to make it is unknown.

in addition to The Last Supper, a second work by the artist in

The patron of this work is possibly Gerard de Smet (+ 1469), master of the collegiate school and member of the Brotherhood of the Holy Sacrament. The work was definitely in the possession of the brotherhood after 1475. ASK HOW TO SHOW WAYBACK MACHINE

Dissertation page 181, note 22 After centuries of shifting attributions, Bouts’s authorship of the painting was put on solid ground with the discovery in 1858 of a receipt signed by the artist—an attribution that was secured with the publication in 1898 by Edward van Even of the contract of 15 March 1476 between Bouts and the Brotherhood: “Le Contrat pour l’execution du triptyche de Thierry Bouts, de la collégiale Saint-Pierre, à Louvain (1464) in Bulletin de l’Académie royale des Sciences, des Lettres et des Beaux-Arts de Belgique,

Condition and conservation

conservation link to https://www.mleuven.be/en/even-more-m/restoration-bouts-martyrdom-saint-erasmus (OR PUT THIS UNDER SEE ALSO section?)

Further Reading

• cat rais
• tetonstelling
• dissertation

See also

• Altarpiece of the Holy Sacrament
• M Museum Leuven "The Martyrdom of Saint Erasmus" from 2023.