Berner Nelkenmeister
Saints Crispin and Crispinian

Freiburg, 1510
Oil on panel
Schweizerisches Landesmuseum, Zürich

This is the outer side of a wing of an altarpiece. On the right in the upper panel the woman in green points to the child and to the man behind her, each of whom is barefoot and needs shoes. The saint is at work building a shoe; he refers the woman to his brother on the left, who is distributing free shoes to the poor. This was the brothers' way of getting people to come to their workshop and perhaps stay awhile to learn about the Christian faith.

In the lower panel the chief minister Rictiovarus (in the green hat) presents Crispin and Crispinian to Maximian, whose scepter signifies his authority as emperor. In the legend it is only after Maximian has ordered the brothers to be tortured that Rictiovarus has his men push sticks under their fingernails, but the artist has chosen to represent the sticks anyway. In another slight difference, they are brought to the emperor tied in ropes, not chained as in the legend.

The officer holding the saint by the shoulder wears solid shoes, tight hose, and an enormous codpiece, in contrast with the saints, who are modestly dressed and are barefoot even though they have been making shoes for the poor for some time.

"Berner Nelkenmeister" is not a person's name. According to the German Wikipedia the "Nelkenmeisters" were an anonymous group of about thirty Swiss painters who worked between 1479 and 1510. Our artist was a "Berner Nelkenmeister," that is, a Nelkenmeister from the city of Bern.

Read more about images of SS. Crispin and Crispinian.

Photographed at the museum by Albert A. Thibault, Jr., shared under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.