The Mass of Saint Giles

On the back of this panel is a second picture, Saint Peter painted in shades of grey to look like a stone statue. That was a habit of altarpieces in the Low Countries, and it suggests the panel was a movable wing, showing imitation stone when the altarpiece stood closed. The front shows a moment every churchgoer around 1500 waited for, the elevation, when the priest lifts the consecrated host above his head. The priest here is Giles, a hermit. An angel flies in with a sheet of writing, and its Latin says that by the merit of Saint Giles, remission of sins is granted to Charles, meaning the emperor Charlemagne kneeling close by. Scientific examination has shown the painter changing his mind again and again, in the drawing under the paint and then in the paint itself.