THE MARTYRDOM OF ST DENIS.

Lime wood on board. 61 x 47cm. 2026.

I love Bellechose's work, painted in 1415, but which feels very modern. I wanted to do one last relief panel in pieces of wood and thought this would make an appropriate subject to recreate. 

This exerpt by Susie Nash, from "The Martyrdom of St Denis, the Chartreuse de Champmol and the Battle of Nicopolis" on the Courtauld website goes some way into describing why it is such a strange and striking painting:

"While its size, technical brilliance, extraordinary imagery, early date and sheer survival demand attention, it is often seen as an oddity: a 'curious

combination of cult image and historical narrative', as Panofsky described it, that marries passages of bold observation and violent action with compelling, exotic but puzzling figures, who leer or gesture in unexplained ways, the whole dominated by large amounts of ultramarine and an extensive, finely tooled gold ground that has lost all definition with time and become distractingly flat. St Denis's mitre seems to float free of his head; the vestments of Christ melt into the gold background; and the angels that weave through the rays emanating from God the Father appear disembodied, their finely tooled wings hardly visible: the nuanced interplay of depth and space that must have characterised the whole, especially in flickering candlelight, is now hard to recover or fully comprehend."