St Dorothy (interior) and St Alexius (exterior)

The four women on the inner sides of these wings, Barbara, Margaret, Catherine and Dorothy, formed a set that late medieval worshippers in German-speaking lands knew as the chief virgins. Dorothy is the one with flowers. Her legend says that on her way to execution a scribe named Theophilus mockingly asked her to send him roses and fruit from paradise, and a child later brought him a basket of them. Here she holds that basket beside a flowering branch. The outer side carries a stranger story. St Alexius, the son of a rich Roman, left home on his wedding night, returned years later unrecognised and lived under the stairs of his father's house. The painter gives him the staircase and a stream of water pouring from a small wooden tub, the slops the servants were said to throw over him.