The Crucifixion of the Parlement of Paris

For more than three centuries this panel hung in the Grand Chamber of the Parlement of Paris, the kingdom's highest court, in the palace on the Île de la Cité. That palace appears in the painting itself, in the view of Paris behind the saints, along with the Seine and the old Louvre castle. The work was probably ordered in 1452, some 16 years after the court had returned from Poitiers, where it sat while Paris was held by the English and their Burgundian allies. In the same chamber kings came in person for a lit de justice, a sitting that forced the judges to register royal edicts. The painter is known only as the Master of Dreux Budé, and his identification with André d'Ypres remains a hypothesis. The panel left the courthouse in 1904, when religious images were being taken down from French courtrooms.