Cassirer and Helbing

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Surrounded by twenty-two men, women, and winged angels, a young man, wearing only a white loincloth, stands in a shallow body of water facing another man who kneels on the bank next to him and pours water onto his head in this horizontal painting. All the people have pale skin. At the center of the composition, the man in the water, Jesus, stands with his body angled slightly to our right. He is slim with shoulder-length, chestnut-brown hair, and he raises his hands to his chest, fingertips almost touching. To our right, the man who trickles water onto his head, John, faces our left in profile. Long, scraggly brown hair and beard frame his lined, wrinkled face, and he wears a camel-brown robe covering his torso and legs. It appears to be made from an animal skin whose face hangs at the bottom, draped over the edge of the riverbank. His bare arms reach forward toward Jesus as he upends a vessel in his right hand to pour out drops of water. The pair is flanked by three angels. The angel kneeling on the bank to our left has red hair and rust-red and teal-blue wings. That angel wears a scarlet-red cloak richly decorated with gold patterns and bordered with gemstones. With hands raised and fingertips touching, the angel holds a gray-green cloak hanging over a white robe. Two smaller angels kneel closer to us in front of the men. The red-headed angel on our left wears a powder-blue robe and strums a lute. The other, with blond hair and a white robe, draws a bow across a violin to our right. A crowd of fifteen people float above and around Jesus, John, and the angels to create an arch over them. They are dressed in robes of crimson or rose red, violet purple, peacock blue, moss green, or beige, and some are dressed as clergy members. Each person holds an object, for example, a basket of wafers, a sword, or a bishop’s crook. A man on the right side wearing armor kneels on a dragon. An elderly bearded man wearing a crown sits at the top of the arch with his hands raised. Small angels on either side of him hold open his scarlet-red cloak, which is lined with peacock blue. A long, narrow scroll curls in the pale blue sky under him. It reads, “HIC EST EILIVS MEVS DILECTV IN QVO MICHI CONLICVI.” The landscape around Jesus, John, and the angels on the riverbank creates a low hill topped with bushy trees. A half moon of pale blue sky encloses the landscape, creating a dome shape across the center of the composition. The crowd of men and women seem to float between the sky and the shiny gold background that surrounds the people and whole scene.
Master of the Saint Bartholomew Altar, The Baptism of Christ, c. 1485/1500, oil on panel, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1961.9.78

The Baptism of Christ

Master of the Saint Bartholomew Altar · c. 1485/1500 · oil on panel ·  Accession ID  1961.9.78

Shown from the knees up behind a gray ledge, a woman with pale, peachy skin stands holding a palm frond in one hand and a disembodied pair of eyes branching from a stem like a flower in the other in this vertical, arched painting. Against a gold background, the woman’s body faces us, but her head turns to our left even as she cuts her hooded, light gray eyes down to the pair of disembodied eyes she holds to our right. On her oval face, one of her curving brows is lifted, and she has a rounded chin, flushed cheeks, and her pink lips are closed. Her blond hair is pulled up under a sheer white head covering, and the ends of opaque white fabric, like a scarf, flutter up over each her shoulders. She wears a ruby-red dress with ties up the sleeves, which are worn over a white undergarment. Over the dress, her forest-green robe is tied under her bust, and the edges are bordered with gold along the slitted openings for the sleeves and down the front. Green drapery falls behind the gray ledge, but is bunched up to our right, suggesting that one foot rests up on the ledge so the knee is at hip height. In her right hand, to our left, she holds a dark green palm frond with long, blade-like leaves. Held delicately in her other hand, the disembodied pair of eyes are attached with leaf-like sepals where the petals of a flower usually connect with the stem. The eyes are light brown and seem to look up between peach-colored upper and lower lids. A gold halo with radiating lines is incised into the gold background around the woman’s head. The top half of the panel is arched.
Francesco del Cossa, Saint Lucy, c. 1473/1474, tempera on poplar panel, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1939.1.228

Saint Lucy

Francesco del Cossa · c. 1473/1474 · tempera on poplar panel ·  Accession ID  1939.1.228

Francesco del Cossa, Saint Florian, c. 1473/1474, tempera on poplar panel, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1939.1.227

Saint Florian

Francesco del Cossa · c. 1473/1474 · tempera on poplar panel ·  Accession ID  1939.1.227