Saints Crispin and Crispinian in their Cobbler's Workshop

Saints Crispin and Crispinian in their Cobbler's Workshop


Details

Museum
Belvedere
Year
1520
Medium
paint on spruce panel
Dimensions
81 × 61 cm

The story

Two haloes give the saints away in what otherwise looks like a shoemaker's shop of around 1520. One belongs to the man in the fur-trimmed coat, who has black leather in his lap and points toward the counter. The other belongs to the older man leaning over it, cutting leather with a curved knife. Their legend makes Crispin and Crispinian brothers from a noble Roman family who fled persecution in the 3rd century to Soissons, where they preached and made shoes by night, earning enough to live on and to help the poor. A barefoot old man with a stick and a bound leg leans in at the counter. A journeyman without a halo pulls his thread tight on a stool, his tools scattered on the floor. Up on a roof beam crouches a white mouse.

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