Allegory of Salvation

Wolfgang von Salm became prince-bishop of Passau in 1541, and in the years after he ordered this crowded panel from Huber, the painter of his court. The bishop kneels in the foreground as donor, and behind him the apostle Peter points up at the crucified Christ. Beside the cross the painting sets an older story from the Book of Numbers, in which Moses raises a serpent of bronze on a pole and the people bitten by snakes are healed by looking at it. Christian readers had long taken that scene as a foreshadowing of the Crucifixion. Further back, small scenes from the Acts of the Apostles show Peter and John healing a lame man, Peter preaching in the Temple, and the apostles being taken to prison. The Latin tablet in front quotes Peter before the council in Jerusalem, saying the man stands there whole through the name of Jesus Christ, and that there is salvation in no other. High above the wide landscape, God the Father appears in the sky.