Rem Altarpiece: The Holy Trinity (Throne of Grace)

The man who paid for this altarpiece kept a diary. Lukas Rem, a merchant from Augsburg, spent some two decades working for the Welser trading house, in Lyon, in Lisbon, where he fitted out ships for the voyages to India, and in Antwerp. His journal records his travels, his children and the illnesses he lived through. In 1518 he left the Welsers to found his own firm with his brothers, and married Anna Ehem, the daughter of an Augsburg merchant. The altarpiece, given by the couple together, belongs to those years. The museum dates another panel of it to around 1518. It was painted by the Antwerp master Quinten Massys. This panel shows the Trinity in the type called the Throne of Grace, in which God the Father presents his sacrificed son. According to the museum, fear of plague shaped the subject. Saint Roch and Saint Sebastian, the saints people prayed to against the plague, appear on other panels of the altarpiece, which hang right beside this one.