Saint Barbara (c. 1520): Art, History and Details

Saint Barbara (c. 1520) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Master of the Holy Blood (Netherlandish).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Saint Barbara holds both a book and a ring symbolizing her scholarly pursuits and union with God. According to legend, the leather thongs with which she was beaten were transformed into peacock plumes. This painting and one other in the collection (1942.633.1) were originally the wings of an altarpiece flanking a central panel, now lost, that may have depicted the Holy Family. The identity of this artist is unknown, but he is named for a painting in the Chapel of the Holy Blood in Bruges. Bruges flourished as an international commercial center through the 1400s and early 1500s. Among its residents were many foreign merchants and bankers who, along with the Burgundian court, patronized artists and attracted specialized craftsmen such as furriers, hatters, jewelers, and goldsmiths. Bruges’s artistic production in the 1400s included celebrated artists like Jan van Eyck, Petrus Christus, Hans Memling, and Gerard David who painted large altarpieces, small panels for private devotion, and portraits. Bruges also remained an important center for the production of illuminated manuscripts.

Object facts

• Title: Saint Barbara
• Date: c. 1520
• Creator attribution: Master of the Holy Blood (Netherlandish)
• Culture: Flanders, Bruges
• Type: Painting
• Technique: tempera on wood panel
• Dimensions: Framed: 91 x 34.5 x 5.5 cm (35 13/16 x 13 9/16 x 2 3/16 in.); Unframed: 86.3 x 29.2 cm (34 x 11 1/2 in.)
• Collection: MED - Renaissance
• Department: Medieval Art
• Accession number: 1942.633.2

Collection credit

Bequest of John L. Severance

Further reading listed by the museum

• Philips, Claude, "Old Master at the Royal Academy: First Notice," The Daily Telegraph, Jan. 5, 1907.
• Royal Academy of Arts (Great Britain). Exhibition of Works by the Old Masters and Deceased Masters of the British School: Including a Collection of Water Colours and Chalk Drawings. [LONDON, GREAT BRITAIN]: [ROYAL ACADEMY OF ARTS], 1907.
• Friedländer, Max Julius. Die altniederländische Malerei: Joos Van Cleve, Jan Provost, Joachim Patennier. Die Altniederländische Malerei. Berlin: Cassirer, 1931.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.