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Master of Saint Giles, 'The Mass of Saint Giles', about 1500

About the work

Overview

This panel is one of four surviving fragments of a large altarpiece that showed the lives of various French saints, many with royal connections. Charlemagne, Holy Roman Emperor, kneels beside an altar at which a priest is performing Mass. At the top an angel flies down from heaven with a divine proclamation.

This is one of the legends of Saint Giles, a popular French saint. Charlemagne had committed a sin so awful he was unable to confess it. While visiting him, Saint Giles celebrated mass and prayed for him. An angel appeared bearing a letter; it explained that because of Giles’s prayer, the sin was forgiven.

The church in the painting is based on a real one: the royal mausoleum of Saint Denis in Paris. This is the only surviving view of it as it was in the late Middle Ages, albeit somewhat simplified.

Key facts

Details

Full title
The Mass of Saint Giles
Artist dates
active about 1500
Part of the series
Two Panels from an Altarpiece
Date made
about 1500
Medium and support
oil on wood
Dimensions
62.3 × 46 cm
Acquisition credit
Presented by the Art Fund, 1933
Inventory number
NG4681
Location
Not on display
Collection
Main Collection
Frame
20th-century Replica Frame

About this record

If you know more about this painting or have spotted an error, please contact us. Please note that exhibition histories are listed from 2009 onwards. Bibliographies may not be complete; more comprehensive information is available in the National Gallery Library.

Images

About the series: Two Panels from an Altarpiece

Overview

These two panels show episodes from the life of Saint Giles, a seventh-century hermit who was enormously popular in medieval France. They once formed part of the folding wings of a large polyptych (a multi-panelled altarpiece). Two more of its panels are in the National Gallery of Art, Washington.

When the altarpiece was open it showed scenes from lives of several saints, many with French royal connections, set in Paris churches. On the back were saints painted in tones of grey to look like statues.

We don't know exactly how the panels were originally arranged or where the altarpiece was originally located, or even who the artist was. However, he was probably working in Paris in around 1500, as in these paintings, the clothes worn by the laity (people who are not church officials) were in fashion in the first years of the sixteenth century.

Works in the series

A deer cowers in the protective arms of an elderly man; an arrow sticks out of his hand, which rests on the deer’s back. A richly dressed man and a cleric kneel before him; a group of hunters crowd behind them. The wounded man is Saint Giles, a popular French saint who was mistakenly shot when hu...
Not on display
This panel is one of four surviving fragments of a large altarpiece that showed the lives of various French saints, many with royal connections. Charlemagne, Holy Roman Emperor, kneels beside an altar at which a priest is performing Mass. At the top an angel flies down from heaven with a divine p...
Not on display