Passion Retable: The washing of the apostles feet

The Master of the Housebook's Passion Retable panel depicting the Washing of the Apostles' Feet, painted around 1480 and now in the Gemäldegalerie Berlin, presents the episode from the Last Supper narrative in which Christ kneels before his disciples to wash their feet — an act of humility that inverted the social hierarchies of the ancient world. This subject was central to the Holy Thursday liturgy and to the theological tradition of servant leadership, making it a favored subject for altarpiece programs devoted to the events of the Passion. The Master of the Housebook, one of the most distinctive personalities in late fifteenth-century German painting, brings his characteristic psychological intensity to the event, differentiating the disciples through varied facial types and gestures of surprise, acceptance, or reluctance. The panel forms part of the same Passion cycle as his Resurrection and Last Supper panels.

The master arranges the scene in a compressed interior space, the figures packed tightly around the stooping Christ in a composition that maximizes psychological interaction between the participants. Individual apostles are differentiated with great expressiveness, their reactions ranging from astonishment to submissive acceptance, rendered through the artist's characteristically vivid, almost sketchy handling.