Saint Gervasius

Medieval medicine offered few cures. Christians focused their hopes for recovery from illness or accident on their prayers to saints to intercede for them with God. Saints Cosmas and Damian, Protasius and Gervasius, were two pairs of twin brothers who were invoked for their healing of the sick. The statues of them are from the hospital complex at Abbeville, built between 1484 and 1492, where they may have stood in niches at the entrance to the church, powerful images of caring and hope.

The vigorous modeling and realistic details--as in the variety in their facial expressions- are made more vivid by the use of color and give credibility to the saints' humanity. Their size, relative to the sick at their feet, conveys their superhuman powers, while the clerical garments lend them authority. The stocky proportions are typical of French sculpture of the late 15th century.

Saint Gervasius exorcizes a demon from a kneeling woman who holds up her chains to the saint to break them. In the Middle Ages, the mentally ill were often chained up because there were no special hospitals for them. That the woman's mental state is caused by her being possessed by an evil spirit is represented by the demon sitting on her shoulder, grasping the chain in his mouth.

Provenance

Provenance (from the French provenir, 'to come from/forth') is the chronology of the ownership, custody, or location of a historical object.

[From the hospital (Hôtel-Dieu), Abbeville, demolished by 1904]; Dikran Kelekian, Paris, by purchase; Henry Walters, Baltimore, 1912, by purchase; Walters Art Museum, 1931, by bequest.