Dispersion of the Apostles

After the Ascension, so an old tradition held, the apostles divided the known world among themselves and set out from Jerusalem, each to preach in a different land. Churches marked the parting with a feast on 15 July, one that was widely kept in the Middle Ages. This panel shows that farewell. The apostles stand pressed together on a green meadow against a gold ground, their haloes overlapping in a single band. Two of them clasp hands. An older, balding man in blue crosses his arms over his chest and looks upward. The Belvedere dates the panel to around 1420 to 1430 and can say only that its painter was Austrian or Bohemian. It stayed in an Austrian private collection until the museum bought it in 1990, with help from the Society of Friends of the Fine Arts in Vienna.