The Raising of Lazarus

The Raising of Lazarus by the Master of the Sherborne Almshouse Triptych, painted around 1485 and now in St John's House, depicts the miracle in the Gospel of John in which Christ raises his friend Lazarus of Bethany from the dead four days after his burial — the greatest of Christ's miracles before his own Resurrection, and the event that the Gospels record as triggering the final decision by the Jewish authorities to have him killed. This master, named for a triptych in the Sherborne Almshouse, was an English or English-influenced Flemish painter active in the southern English cultural orbit in the late fifteenth century, producing devotional panels that reflect the Flemish naturalistic tradition adapted to English patronage tastes. The Raising of Lazarus was a subject of profound theological resonance — Christ's power over death demonstrated before the Passion — and its representation in a hospital or almshouse context would have spoken directly to the inhabitants facing illness and death.

The master renders the miracle with the descriptive naturalism of the Flemish tradition, depicting the unwrapped Lazarus emerging from the tomb while the surrounding figures react with wonder, and Martha and Mary kneel before Christ. The landscape setting and the architectural tomb entrance are rendered with Flemish spatial precision appropriate to the master's training.