Saint Stephen

In 1479 Memling was finishing one of the largest commissions of his career in Bruges, the altarpiece for the hospital of Saint John, which carries that date on its frame. This panel comes from the other end of his work. It is less than half a metre tall and was an outer wing of a small portable triptych, the kind a private owner could close, carry and open again for prayer. Saint Stephen wears a deacon's dalmatic, blue with broad gold bands, because he was one of the first deacons of the church in Jerusalem. He holds up one stone and carries more in the fold of his robe, the stones he was killed with. Behind him a road winds toward a walled city, and along it tiny figures act out his story, the stoning included. The same landscape continues into Saint Christopher, the opposite wing, which the same donor also gave to the Cincinnati museum.