Martyrdom of St Andrew

Readers of the Golden Legend, the popular 13th-century book of saints' lives, knew that the apostle Andrew was bound to his cross with ropes. The Roman governor at Patras, in Greece, wanted him to suffer longer, and the old man is said to have preached from it for two days. This panel, painted around 1470 by an unknown Styrian painter, shows the binding still under way. Andrew stands against the diagonal beams of an X-shaped cross, his hands already lashed at the top. A young man hangs on the rope at one wrist, another kneels to knot the feet, and a man in a white turban hauls a cord around one leg. They wear the dress of the painter's own day, puffed striped sleeves, tight hose, pointed red shoes. The panel comes from the Cistercian abbey of Lilienfeld in Lower Austria.