Saint Christophe portant l'Enfant Jésus

Christopher was the saint travellers prayed to before a journey, and the legend is simple. A giant made his living carrying people across a river, until one day a small child asked to be carried and grew heavier with every step, because the child was Christ and the weight was the weight of the whole world. Bosch painted this around 1500 in the town of 's-Hertogenbosch. What makes it his is everything crowded into the landscape around the crossing. A broken jug turned into a hermit's hut hangs in a dead tree, a bear is strung up nearby, and odd little incidents flicker along the far bank. A pilgrim would have known that the danger in this river is not the current but temptation, laid out along both shores. The saint himself wades on with his staff, eyes fixed forward, the child steady on his shoulder.