Saint Andrew

The Bruges panel shows St Andrew, identified from his attribute the St Andrew cross, which refers to his martyr’s death. It was originally the left-hand panel of a small triptych, which judging by its size must have stood on a home altar. The right-hand panel of this triptych, now in the Museo del Prado in Madrid, depicts St Christopher on the inside and the Virgin of the Annunciation on the outside, in grisaille in an arched niche. The outside of the panel was separated from the inside at some point, and the central section of the small retable has been lost.

The painter Jan Provoost, to whom the retable panel is attributed, went to Bruges in 1494, where he deliberately placed himself in the tradition of Jan van Eyck and became one of the main exponents of the sixteenth-century Bruges school of painting. The facial type of St Andrew, the vegetation and the preparatory underdrawing correspond to the work of Provoost and his workshop.