
St. Alexis
ca. 1440
The Netherlands, Utrecht
MS M.917/945, pp. 290–291
Purchased on the Belle da Costa Greene Fund with the assistance of the Fellows, 1963
Catalog link
Alexis stands barefoot before a beautiful red and green patterned textile, holding a small ladder, his attribute. Despite his bare feet, he is well dressed, wearing a brown tiered hat and a mauve cape over a blue robe. In the border, Alexis lies dead on his straw-covered pallet beneath the stairs of his father's palace. He lived there as a beggar, unknown until the scroll clutched in his lifeless fingers revealed his identity as the son of the house.