#medieval

The whole chapel this sits in was paid for by a banker's son — supposedly to make up for the money his father made lending at interest, which the Church counted as a sin at the time. It's one panel out of a whole wall of them telling the story in order, so it was never meant to be looked at on its own.

This used to be shown as the middle piece of a bigger altarpiece — five panels, according to the National Gallery — until they got separated somewhere along the way. It was even catalogued as someone else's work for a while before curators settled on who actually painted it.

This one's part of a set — seven small panels showing scenes from the life of Christ, according to the Met, though nobody's fully sure which church they were first painted for.

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.

The story goes that she rode through Coventry with nothing on to shame her husband into cutting the town's taxes. From what I've read the tale only turns up a couple of hundred years after she'd actually died, so nobody thinks it happened — Coventry has run with it anyway, processions and all.

From what I can find this was the only easel painting he ever managed to finish — he gave up on painting not long after and put everything into wallpaper, fabric and furniture instead. The woman modelling for it was Jane Burden, who he married the year after. There's a story that he wrote on the back that he couldn't paint her but he loved her; no idea whether that's true or just a good line people repeat.

This one's part of a set — seven small panels showing scenes from the life of Christ, according to the Met, though nobody's fully sure which church they were first painted for.

This isn't a standalone picture — it's one panel in a whole room of them, painted straight onto the walls in sequence. The man who paid for the chapel had inherited a moneylending fortune, and from what I've read Dante had already stuck his father in hell over it, so the whole thing gets described as a very expensive apology.