The Dream of Pope Sergius

An elderly pope lies asleep under a striped canopy while two attendants in red and black keep watch, and through the braced doorway of the bedchamber an angel steps forward bearing a reliquary: the moment, from the medieval legend of Pope Sergius I, in which a vision clears the slandered pope’s name. The panel belongs to a series painted for the church of Saint-Étienne in Tournai in the late 1430s, and it shows Rogier van der Weyden at the height of his powers — a web of long, unbroken folds, hard polished gilding, and faces that stay utterly still and yet alive. The painting is held in the J. Paul Getty Museum.