Saint Luke Painting the Virgin

Derick Baegert was a Westphalian painter based in Wesel whose Saint Luke Painting the Virgin belongs to the tradition of guild altarpieces commissioned by painters' guilds who took Luke as their patron saint. The subject — the Evangelist Luke depicted painting the Virgin from life, based on the apocryphal tradition that Luke had made her portrait — served as a professional manifesto for painters' guilds, asserting the divine sanction of their craft. Baegert's version is distinguished by his willingness to show Luke at work with realistic tools, incorporating the studio setting into a devotional image.

Baegert stages the scene in a domestic interior rendered in the Flemish manner — deep space receding through a window to a Westphalian landscape beyond. Luke's portrait of the Virgin is shown on an easel as a work in progress, the curious double image of the Virgin present both in the room and on the canvas creating a theologically complex visual layering.