Canon Bernardijn Salviati and Three Saints

A thin-faced man kneels in prayer, surrounded by three saints. This is Bernardijn Salviati, illegitimate son of a Florentine merchant, and canon of the Collegiate Church of Saint Donatian in Bruges. The saints are, from left to right: Martin of Tours, with the beggar he gave his cloak to on the road behind him; Bernardijn's name saint, the Franciscan Bernardino of Siena, in a grey habit; and Donatian, patron of Bernardijn's church.

The panel, which originally had an arched top, was almost certainly part of a diptych (a painting in two parts) commissioned for the chapel of Saint John the Baptist and Mary Magdalene at Saint Donatian's, which Bernardijn was given permission to restore in January 1501. The other panel probably showed the Crucifixion (Staatliche Museen, Berlin). On the back of our panel is a ruined picture apparently showing the resurrected Christ at an open window.

Credit: Bequeathed by William Benoni White, 1878