The Burning Bush

King Rene of Anjou, who ruled Provence and still claimed the crowns of Naples and Jerusalem, ordered this triptych in the mid-1470s for a Carmelite church in Aix where his own remains were to rest. Froment gave him an unusual image. At the centre Moses halts before the bush that burns without being consumed, but seated in its branches, in place of any flame, are the Virgin and Child, a medieval way of tying that Old Testament vision to the birth of Christ. On the two wings the king and his wife, Queen Jeanne, kneel in prayer. After revolutionaries suppressed the convent in 1792, the work was moved to the town's cathedral, where it still stands.