Explore the Patronage, commission and authorship of this artwork, The Martyrdom of St Erasmus (Bouts).
First mentioned in the sixteenth century, the Martyrdom of Saint Erasmus was documented as owned by the Confraternity of the Holy Sacrament by 1535. Whether the sodality had given the order as a group to make the work is uncertain, though the altarpiece would surely have been in possession of the brotherhood after 1475.
The initial patron of this work may have been Gerard Fabri, also known as Gerard de Smet (†1469), master of the collegiate school and a member of the Confraternity of the Holy Sacrament in Leuven. De Smet endowed the saying of an annual mass in the chapel on his behalf. The chapel had been dedicated to St. Erasmus in 1433, and the confranternity may have chosen Erasmus as the patron of this chapel because of its wish to honor Erasme van Brussele, a member of the brotherhood and the mayor of Leuven at the time.
Until the early nineteenth century, the picture had been ascribed to Bouts' contemporary, Hans Memling or to other artists. After centuries of shifting attributions, Bouts’ authorship of the painting was put on solid ground with the discovery in 1858 of a receipt signed by the artist, an attribution that was secured with the publication in 1898 by Edward van Even of the contract executed 15 March 1476 between Bouts and the Brotherhood.
collegiate Hans Memling mass sodality Erasmus altarpiece Leuven Martyr