A Popular Handbook to the National Gallery, Volume I, Foreign Schools / Including by Special Permission Notes Collected from the Works of John Ruskin

by Unknown

264. A COUNT OF HAINAULT AND HIS PATRON SAINT.

Unknown (Early Flemish).

The count and the confessor. The count, attired as a monk, is praying. Behind him is his patron saint (St. Ambrose), holding a cross in one hand, a scourge in the other. More important, however, than the penitence of the count is the splendour of the robes. The picture is a good illustration of the love of jewellery characteristic of the time. "That this love of jewels was shared by the painters is sufficiently shown by the amount and beauty of the jewelled ornaments introduced by them into their pictures. Not only are brooches and clasps, sceptres and crowns, studded with precious stones, but the hems of garments are continually sewn with them, whilst gloves and shoes of state are likewise so adorned" (Conway, p. 121). This picture is by some ascribed to Gerard van der Meire (see under 1078).