Master of the St Elizabeth Panels

In November 1421, on the night of the feast of Saint Elizabeth, the dikes of southern Holland gave way. Around Dordrecht 23 villages went under and some 2,000 people died. About 70 years later, around 1490 to 1495, an unknown painter showed the disaster on the outer wings of an altarpiece for the Grote Kerk, Dordrecht's main church. The broken dike appears on one side and the town of Dordrecht, still standing, on the other, with boats, people and livestock in the water between.

The painter is named after four panels from this altarpiece, now in the Rijksmuseum, which bought them in 1933. Besides the two flood scenes, they include scenes from the life of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, a medieval princess remembered for caring for the sick. He probably worked in Dordrecht itself, but nothing else is known about him, and no other paintings have been attributed to him. The panels left the church after the Reformation in 1572 and were sold in 1801.