Portrait of Hieronymus Tscheckenburlin and Death

One panel holds a well-dressed young man, the other a corpse. The two were painted to sit together as a pair, and they turn on a single decision made in 1487. The man is Hieronymus Tscheckenburlin, who had come home to Basel from France with a law degree and every reason to expect a comfortable public career. Instead, at 26, he gave it up and entered the Basel Charterhouse, the strict Carthusian monastery at the edge of town. He had himself painted in the fine festive clothes he wore on the day he walked in, set against the figure of Death, so the portrait would say plainly why a man would trade all of this for a monk's cell. He rose to become prior in 1501 and was the last to hold that post. Within a generation the Reformation reached Basel and closed the charterhouse for good.