七件慈悲善工

We do not know who painted this, and the name we use comes from the work itself. In 1914 a scholar, needing something to call the anonymous artist, named him the Master of Alkmaar after these seven panels, made in 1504 for a church in that Dutch town. Each panel shows one of the seven acts of Christian charity, feeding the hungry, sheltering the traveller, burying the dead, and they play out in the streets of an ordinary town around 1500, among real-looking townspeople. Look for Christ, who stands quietly in nearly every crowd, usually unnoticed by the figures around him. In 1566 Protestant crowds smashed Catholic church art across the Low Countries, and these panels still carry damage from that year.