Emperor Heraclius Denied Entry into Jerusalem

The panel belongs to the medieval legend of the True Cross. Heraclius, emperor of Byzantium, had recovered the relic from the Persians and brought it back to Jerusalem in triumph; at the gate an angel barred his way, pointing out the vanity of a triumphal procession compared with the humility of Christ’s own entry into the city, and only when the emperor dismounted and approached on foot was he permitted to enter. Scenes from the legend were gathered into extended cycles such as once decorated an altarpiece dedicated to the Holy Cross, a devotion of real importance in the fifteenth century, when fragments of the relic were venerated across Europe. The panel was painted in the southern Netherlands in the generation after Rogier van der Weyden, when painters of the region were refining the new oil technique on precisely this kind of small-scale devotional narrative, and it entered the Art Institute of Chicago with the collection of George F. Harding. The painting is held in the Art Institute of Chicago.