Gerard David was born near Gouda in the northern Netherlands but he moved south to establish his career in the important artistic centre of Bruges. He carried forward the realist traditions established by earlier masters such as Jan van Eyck and Hugo van der Goes but he added his own distinctive, almost eccentric charm to the porcelain-smooth painting techniques of his predecessors.

It is often difficult for us to evoke the original context for works of art in the setting of a modern art gallery, but these pictures represent a particular challenge for our imagination. They once formed part of a much larger altarpiece, dominated by three monumental panels (now in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC) showing Saint Anne with the Virgin and Child flanked by Saint Nicholas and Saint Anthony of Padua. Our pictures are three out of seven much smaller panels which would have been ranged along the bottom of the ensemble as a predella (from the Italian for foot­stool); the other four works are now in the Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio and the Art Institute of Chicago. 

In its original form this must have been one of the most imposing of early Netherlandish altar­pieces. Surprisingly, the circumstances behind its commission are unknown and the panels are not recorded until the early nineteenth century when they were in the collection of Cardinal Despuig in Palma, Majorca. It is assumed that they were made for export to Spain or Italy, as the format with the predella is rare in Netherlandish art.

While we can only guess at the impressive impact of the complete altarpiece, these fragments have now become very popular works in the Scottish National Gallery, perhaps because of their association with the modern Santa Claus, but possibly also because of their slightly quirky theatricality. Saint Nicholas, the Bishop of Myra in Asia Minor in the fourth century, is particularly associated with generous deeds and with children. In the left-hand work, the infant saint stands bolt upright, his hands clasped in prayer as he gives thanks to God for giving him life. The next scene shows a commonly illustrated episode (which also appears in Daddi’s Triptych, no.1); as a young man, Saint Nicholas secretly saves the daughters of an impoverished nobleman from a life of prostitution. The three daughters lie asleep watched over by their father while Saint Nicholas leans through the window to deposit a sack of money into the bedroom. The final panel illustrates how the saint rescued three boys from a gruesome fate. During a famine, a butcher had murdered three young boys and steeped their body parts in a vat of brine. At a sign of the cross from Saint Nicholas they were restored to life. Here, the trio seem grateful yet understandably eager to clamber out of their salty bath.

This text was originally published in 100 Masterpieces: National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh, 2015.