Master Morata, The Passion Altarpiece: Details from the left side of the predella

Aragon, circa 1470-1505
Tempera and gold on wood
The Cloisters, New York City (gift of George Blumenthal, accession numbers 11.3.1 and 35.35.19)


Credo in deum patrem omnipotentem, creatorem celi et terrae, "I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of Heaven and Earth."
Et in ihesum christum filium eius unicum, dominum nostrum, "And in Jesus Christ his only son, Our Lord."
Qui conceptus est de spiritu sancto, natus ex maria virgine, "Who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary."
Inde venturus est iudicare vivos et mortuos, "From whence he will come to judge the living and the dead."
Credo in spiritum sanctum, unam, "I believe in the Holy Spirit, one…" (continues on the next scroll).
Sanctam ecclesiam catholicam, "holy catholic church."

This is the left half of a predella picturing six of the apostles with phrases from the Apostles' Creed in Latin. The pairing of individual Apostles with specific phrases from the Creed was a commonplace in medieval art and literature.

The first three panels follow the first three phrases of the prayer and picture Peter (identified by the short, square beard), John, and James the Greater (with his attribute, the scallop shell). These are the first three Apostles in the list in Acts 1:13. The banderoles in the next three panels present what were traditionally taken to be the Creed's seventh, eighth, and ninth phrases, so the Apostles pictured are probably Bartholomew, Matthew, and James the Less, who stand seventh, eighth, and ninth in the Acts list.

It is most likely that the right half of the altarpiece, now lost, featured the other Apostles with their phrases.

View the entire left side of the altarpiece.
Read more about images relating the Apostles to the Creed.

Photographed at The Cloisters by Richard Stracke, shared under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.