Two Legends of St. Nicholas 1510

Gerard David painted this piece, "Two Legends of St. Nicholas" in Bruges, a city in present-day Belgium, sometime around the year 1500. The image brings together two miracle stories about the early Christian Saint Nicholas, stories that emphasize charity and the importance of financial support. On the right, we see St. Nicholas providing dowries for three impoverished girls, saving them from a life of prostitution. The bags of gold in the window allude to the saint secretly providing the needed wealth. On the left, he convinces a cruel butcher to return three children he had slaughtered and pickled in a barrel. Bruges was a major banking center in this period. The painting’s concern with the power of wealth to save lives reflects how the merchant class in Bruges understood the exchange of goods and services as the basis for building a just and pious society. Art historians have used archival records, religious texts, and social histories to contextualize this image. The painting reminds us how art is always a reflection of the values and structures of its own historical moment.