Saint Peter and a Donor (recto); Saint Thomas (verso)

Workshop of Jacob Cornelisz. van Oostsanen · c. 1520

Medium

Oil on panel

Original size

54.4 × 22.8 cm (21 7/16 × 9 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Italian Renaissance

This double-sided devotional panel — Saint Peter beside a kneeling donor on one face, Saint Thomas standing grave and composed on the other — offers a rare glimpse into the intimate piety of early sixteenth-century Netherlandish life. Jacob Cornelisz. van Oostsanen was the most prominent painter working in Amsterdam in the decades before the Reformation reshaped Northern European art, and his workshop brought a distinctive precision to devotional imagery: rich, saturated colour, finely observed faces, and the kind of quiet authority that makes figures feel present rather than merely symbolic. The inclusion of a donor portrait alongside a patron saint was a well-established tradition of the period, a way for private individuals to claim spiritual proximity to the divine through commissioned art. The recto-verso format — a second image painted on the back of a panel — suggests this work may have functioned as part of a portable altarpiece or folding shrine, objects designed not for public display but for daily, personal devotion. Our hand-painted oil reproduction recreates the layered glazes and fine detail of the original, capturing the luminous solemnity that has made this work a lasting highlight of the Art Institute of Chicago's permanent collection.