I sette sacramenti

Around 1440, Flanders was the richest corner of Europe, and its painters were the first anywhere to render the world with this kind of exact, glinting detail. Van der Weyden uses that skill for something practical here. He drops the whole life of the Church inside one tall Gothic nave. Down the centre panel, at the far end, priests raise the bread of the Mass. Off to the sides, in the aisles, the other six rites go on at the same time, a baptism, a confession, a wedding, an ordination, a last anointing, small scenes tucked between the columns. It reads almost like a diagram, except every figure is a living person caught mid-gesture. The bishop who commissioned it, Jean Chevrot, put his own coat of arms in the top corners. Under the crucifix at the centre, a woman in white faints into the arms of the mourners, close enough to touch the foot of the cross.