Antipater before Julius Caesar

A Roman general kneeling before Julius Caesar is a strange thing to find on a church altar, and the reason lies in a single gesture. The story, drawn from a medieval history book, has the general Antipater falsely accused in front of Caesar. Instead of arguing, he pulls open his clothing and shows the scars he earned fighting for Rome, and the wounds themselves clear his name. Medieval theologians paired that image with Christ at the Last Judgment, showing his own wounds to plead for humankind, and that parallel is why Witz painted the scene around 1435 for the Mirror of Salvation altarpiece in Basel. He stages it in a shallow, bare room, the figures monumental and pushed close to us, so the bared wounds are the thing the eye goes to first.