The Iconographic collections of the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine / William Schupbach.

  • Wellcome Historical Medical Library
Date:
1989
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: The Iconographic collections of the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine / William Schupbach. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    13/80 (page 7)
    Fig. 3 Saint Elizabeth visiting the sick. She was the daughter of King Andor II of Hungary and wife of Louis, Landgrave of Thuringia. After her husband's death, she gave away her worldly possessions and turned the income from her dowry over to the building and running of a hospital in Marburg, in which she personally cared for the sick, the poor and the homeless—the subject of this picture. Among other details of hospital life, the painter has placed a painting above each of the beds, and despite his sacred theme, has not eschewed such homely details as the slop-bucket in the centre foreground and the slippers and chamber-pot under the bed in the lower left corner. See further p. 54. Oil painting on copper 27 x 19.5 cm. by Adam Elsheimer, Frankfurt am Main [c. 1598?]