Saint Luke painting the Virgin and Child

For centuries Luke the Evangelist was the patron saint of painters and their guilds. He had after all, according to medieval legend, actually painted the Virgin and the infant Jesus. Many painters honoured him with a ‘portrait’. In this work a man stands behind Luke. According to a contemporary explanation, he represents poetic inspiration: with his right hand he guides the painter’s hand. The trompe-l’oeil cartellino nailed up at the lower left states among other things, ‘This painting is given as a keepsake by Maerten van Heemskerck, who made it. He did this in honour of St Luke; he also had us, his guild brothers, in his thoughts’. The work was thus given by the painter to his guild brothers, in all likelihood shortly before he set off on a trip to Rome, and was probably intended to be hung in the guild chapel in the Church of St Bavo in the Grote Markt. Given the strikingly low vantage point – the painting should be viewed from below – it must have been designed for a high position: above the altar or on a column.