The Miracle of the Gallows

The Miracle of the Gallows attributed to Dieric Bouts depicts a scene from the Legend of the Holy Sacrament—specifically a miracle narrative in which a man wrongly executed for theft is discovered alive on the gallows through divine intervention. Such miracle stories formed the documentary basis of eucharistic devotion in the late medieval Low Countries, and Bouts's Altarpiece of the Holy Sacrament in Leuven's Sint-Pieterskerk was the most important commission connecting painted narrative to eucharistic theology. This attributed work participates in the same devotional and institutional context, using careful Flemish naturalism to render miraculous intervention credible and moving for believers.

The narrative scene is rendered with Bouts's characteristic clarity of drawing and spatial organization, the figures placed within a landscape setting that demonstrates his developing command of atmospheric perspective.