Saint Michael triumphant over the Devil with the Donor Antoni Joan

In 1468 a new high altarpiece was made for the church of San Miguel in Tous, a village near Valencia, and this towering panel was almost certainly its centre. The man kneeling in the corner is the donor, Antoni Joan, lord of Tous. His gold chain and sword mark him as a knight, and the small book in his hands is open at two of the Penitential Psalms, prayers asking forgiveness for sin. Above him the archangel Michael, his coloured wings curving round the donor, raises his sword over a devil whose belly is a second face. Bermejo worked in oil glazes the way the Netherlandish painters did, and the gilded breastplate reflects the spires of the Heavenly Jerusalem. A folded scrap of parchment on the ground carries his signature in Latin, Rubeus, the red one, probably for his hair or complexion.