Icône - Portrait of Eugène Demolder

Eugene Demolder was a Belgian writer and critic, and in 1892 he published the first book on Ensor, at a moment when very few people in Brussels were prepared to defend him. He also arranged Ensor's first solo show there, and his first exhibition abroad. This small panel, painted the year after the book, is the answer.

It is built like an icon, in three bands. At the top sits a close copy of Stefan Lochner's Madonna in the rose garden, a 15th-century German panel, because Demolder loved early northern painting. The middle band runs scenes of the Passion in sequence, his scholarly subject. Along the bottom are devil heads, for the attacks he took in print.

It has been in the Bruges collection since 2004, oil, pencil and gouache worked together on the same board.