#altarpiece

This stood in a monastery hospital, from what I've read, where the monks treated people dying of a disease that covered the skin in sores — and the sick were brought in front of it to pray. The body on the cross is marked the same way they were. It's said the panels opened out differently through the year, so what you were shown changed depending on when you came.

It's a set of hinged panels made for a chapel, painted on the outside as well — so most days it stayed shut and looked like a much plainer thing entirely, and only opened for feast days. It's been carted off and stolen more than once over the centuries, and one lower panel went missing in the thirties which, from what I can find, has never turned up.

According to Wikipedia the side panels are on hinges — the whole thing folds shut over the middle like a cupboard, so there's an open view and a closed one. It was made to stand over a church altar, right where the congregation would face it.