Trinity Altarpiece

Hugo van der Goes's Trinity Altarpiece, painted around 1478 and now in the Royal Collection, Edinburgh, was commissioned by Edward Bonkil, provost of the Collegiate Church of the Holy Trinity in Edinburgh. The work reached Scotland through the cultural connections between the Scottish court and the Burgundian Netherlands. Hugo van der Goes was the most emotionally intense of the early Netherlandish painters, and this late work shows the restless brilliance that preceded his mental breakdown in 1482.

Hugo's characteristically intense style features sharp, angular figure poses, vivid color, and the psychological immediacy that distinguishes his work from the calmer manner of his Bruges contemporaries.