“Saint Luke painting the Virgin” by an unidentified painter known as the “Master of the Holy Blood” is a devotional subject in art showing Luke, the Evangelist, painting the Virgin Mary with the Child Jesus.
This composition was often painted during the Renaissance for chapels of Saint Luke in churches.
This scene became increasingly popular as Saint Luke became the Guild of Saint Luke’s patron saint, the most common name of local painters’ guilds.
These guilds were often conglomerate associations of various professions, including painters, paint-mixers, book illuminators, and sellers of these goods.
As the author of the first Christian icons, the legend of Saint Luke had developed in Byzantium during the Iconoclastic Controversy.
By the 11th century, some images were attributed to his authorship and venerated as authentic portraits of Christ and the Virgin Mary.
Versions of this subject were sometimes painted as the masterpiece that many guilds required an artist to submit before receiving the master title.
The unidentified painter is known as the “Master of the Holy Blood,” as very little is known of their life.
The painter of this painting was named after a “Triptych of the Crucifixion” that had been in the ‘Basilica of the Holy Blood’ in Bruges during the centuries.
Saint Luke painting the Virgin
- Title: Saint Luke painting the Virgin
- Artist: Master of the Holy Blood
- Year: 1510
- Medium: Oil on panel
- Dimensions: 43.6 x 32.4 cm
- Museum: Fogg Art Museum, Harvard Art Museums
Master of the Holy Blood
- Artist: Unidentified painter known as the “Master of the Holy Blood.”
- Active: 1500 – 1520
- Style: Early Netherlandish painter
St Luke the Painter
Saint Luke Displaying a Painting of the Virgin
A Tour of the Harvard Art Museums
- “Saint Luke painting the Virgin” by Master of the Holy Blood
- “Self Portrait, dedicated to Paul Gauguin” by Vincent van Gogh
- “Piazza San Marco with the Basilica, Venice” by Canaletto
- “Grazing Horses IV, Three Red Horses” by Franz Marc
- “The Gare Saint-Lazare: Arrival of a Train” by Claude Monet
Saint Luke Drawing the Virgin & Child
Virtual Tour of Museums in Boston
- Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
- Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
- Harvard Art Museums
- Freedom Trail
- John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum
- USS Constitution
- Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard
Museums in Massachusetts
- Clark Art Institute
- Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, Massachusetts
Saint Luke Painting the Virgin and Child
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“The habit doesn’t make the monk.“
– Spanish Proverb
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Photo Credit: Master of the Holy Blood [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
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