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| Saint Giles and the Deer by The Master of Saint Gilles, c1500 (National Gallery) |
‘Saint
Giles and the Deer’ by the mysterious ‘Master of Saint Giles’ originally
formed one section of a multi-panelled altarpiece dating from the early 1500’s.
The painting and its
companion piece ‘The
Mass of St Giles” depict two of the three most popular stories about
the saint mentioned in the accounts of his life, the most recent of which being
The Golden Legend, a famous medieval hagiography.
Both paintings can be seen
in The National Gallery and their website allows us to zoom in to see minute
detail. The commentary for St Giles and the Deer states: “The different types
of plants and flowers in the wilderness are perhaps a reference to the legend
that the desert flowered around Giles’s hermitage.” Tantalisingly no
description of the flora or what it might symbolise is offered - nor in The
Golden Legend or other versions of the Life of St Giles - so I have attempted
to make an educated guess!
