Arcadian Landscape with Saints Peter and John Healing the Lame Man

In the Book of Acts, Peter and John are on their way to the temple in Jerusalem when a man who has never been able to walk, carried to the gate every day to beg, asks them for money. Peter tells him he has neither silver nor gold. What he gives him instead is the use of his legs, ordering him in the name of Jesus to get up and walk. Van Huysum moved the miracle out of Jerusalem altogether. His apostles meet the beggar in a southern forest landscape, with a waterfall, rocks and classical temples. The picture was painted as one of a pair with an Arcadian scene of a sacrifice to Flora. The two were sold together at Sotheby's in New York in 1981 and passed through the Maastricht dealer Robert Noortman, and in 1997 Mrs C.C.M. de Bièvre-Duijndam gave them to the Friends of the Mauritshuis, who have lent them to the museum ever since.