Saint Luke Drawing the Virgin

Around 1435 in the Low Countries, Rogier van der Weyden painted the evangelist Luke, the patron saint of painters, kneeling with a silverpoint to sketch the Virgin as she nurses her child. It is a picture about the act of picturing, made at the moment oil paint was letting Netherlandish artists render velvet, brass and distant riverbanks with almost unsettling precision. Behind the two figures a couple leans on a parapet and gazes out over a town and a winding river, painted small and sharp. Many believe the face of Saint Luke is van der Weyden's own, so a painter here signs his trade onto its holy patron. The oak panel has suffered. It has been restored at least four times, the earliest in 1893, the year Boston acquired it.