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View at the museum ↗The Battle of St. James The Greater at Clavijo
School of Martin Schongauern.d.
- Attribution
- school of Martin Schongauer German, c. 1430/50-1491
- Medium
- Engraving on paper
- Physical dimensions
- Sheet trimmed within platemark: 28.7 × 42.3 cm (11 5/16 × 16 11/16 in.)
- Credit line
- Bequest of Mrs. Potter Palmer, Jr.
Museum metadata is available under CC0. Image availability and rights are separate; consult the source record.
Source rights statement: Public domain
View the museum record ↗From the museum
Saint James the Greater (died a.d. 44) was one of Christ’s apostles and the patron saint of Spain. He was said to have miraculously appeared, sword in hand, to help the Christian Spaniards defeat a Muslim army in a.d. 844—a battle that in fact never happened. The scene here abounds in gritty details such as the beheaded enemy corpse and various dismembered limbs. The saint wears a scallop shell on his hat, an allusion to the sign pilgrims wore on their long journey to revere his relics at the Spanish cathedral of Santiago de Compostela.
Description: Art Institute of Chicago · CC BY 4.0