Saint Martin Sharing His Cloak

Martin was a Roman soldier stationed at Amiens, in northern Gaul, when, the legend says, he met a freezing beggar at the city gate one winter and cut his military cloak in half with his sword. Painters usually put him on horseback. Here he stands, a bearded saint with a halo, looking down as the blade goes through the red cloth, and the beggar's head appears at the left edge. Much of the paint at the lower left has flaked away, so the beggar's body is almost entirely lost.

This scene was painted on the back of the Fall of the Rebel Angels, on the same board. The two faces were later separated, and in 1967 each was transferred to canvas, the same year the city of Bourges deposited them at the Louvre. Before that the panel passed through private collections at Villeperdue, near Tours, and at Moulins, until it was given to the Musée du Berry in 1963.