A triptych: central panel: The Coronation of the Virgin; the wings: Saint Helena; and Saint Barbara; outer faces: The Annunciation

The depiction of St Helena in the Netherlands was relatively unusual through the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The presence of some of the saint’s relics in Trier may have been the impetus for her depiction by German painters like Lucas Cranach the Elder, but aside from a panel now in Munich by Cornelis Engebrechtsz. of the Emperor Constantine and Saint Helena (Alte Pinakothek, in. no. 1458), her depiction in Flanders and the Netherlands was by no means a standard iconography. The painter of this triptych was evidently on more familiar grounds with the central and left panels since both were popularly iconographies well represented across the visual arts. Indeed, the painter was even able to make use of existing models in his own work: his Virgin, for example, is almost identical to that in Joos van Cleve’s Annunciation (New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. no. 32.100.60). The presence of the two saints and the central Coronation of the Virgin suggests the possibility that the triptych may have been commissioned for a Benedictine church. The Coronation was celebrated in the popular Salve Regina hymn, originally composed by a Benedictine monk Hermann of Reichenau (1013-1054), and which was frequently sung by the Order. Likewise, Saint Helena appears to have been important for Benedictine devotions since the majority of her relics were preserved at their abbey at Saint-Pierre d’Hautvillers in the Marne. Though such a theory must remain conjectural, the specific and relatively unusual combination of iconographies in this triptych could, perhaps, lend credence to such a hypothesis.