The Seven Sacraments (left panel)

This left panel of the Seven Sacraments altarpiece, painted around 1445 for Jean Chevrot, Bishop of Tournai, depicts three of the seven sacraments within a unified Gothic church interior. The innovative concept of showing all sacraments simultaneously in one architectural space was Rogier's original invention. Rogier van der Weyden, the most influential Flemish painter of the mid-fifteenth century, combined Jan van Eyck's technical achievements in oil painting with a new emotional intensity and compositional drama that his predecessor's work had not achieved. His altarpieces for the major churches and institutions of Brussels, Bruges, and their international clientele defined the vocabulary of Flemish devotional art for two generations. Painters from Germany, France, Spain, and Italy absorbed and adapted his compositional formulas and his approach to devotional emotion, making him the single most important transmitter of Flemish painting technique and aesthetic to the broader European tradition.

The church interior is rendered with meticulous perspective, the Gothic vaulting creating a convincing spatial framework. Rogier's figures are placed at various depths within the architecture, creating a complex narrative layering.