707. ST. PETER AND ST. DOROTHY.
Master of the Cologne Crucifixion (Early German School: early 16th century).
Part of an altar-piece, the rest of which is in the Munich Gallery, by an artist whose name is unknown, and who is therefore called after his principal works (now in the Cologne Museum). It has been well said of him that "he succeeded in giving an intense expression of transient emotion to the faces; but by endeavouring to lend a sympathetic action to the whole figure, he has exaggerated the action into distortion" (History of Painting, from the German of Woltmann and Woermann, ii. 224). This is conspicuously the case here. Look, for instance, at the comic contrast between St. Peter's big foot and St. Dorothy's pointed little shoe—between what is almost a leer on his face and the "mincing" affectation on hers. St. Peter is distinguished of course by the keys; St. Dorothy by the basket of flowers—the flowers which she sent to Theophilus in token of the truth of the faith in which she died: "Carry these to Theophilus, say that Dorothea has sent them, and that I go before him to the garden whence they came and await him there" (see Mrs. Jameson; Sacred and Legendary Art, p. 336, ed. 1850).