Résurrection miraculeuse des poulets rôtis

The Résurrection miraculeuse des poulets rôtis by the Master of the Legend of Saint James, painted around 1480 and now in the Unterlinden Museum in Colmar, depicts one of the most celebrated miraculous episodes associated with Saint James the apostle — the miraculous resurrection of roasted chickens as evidence of a pilgrim's innocence before an unjust judge. This legendary miracle, recorded in the Golden Legend, was a popular subject in altarpiece cycles dedicated to Saint James, patron of pilgrims and the destination of the great Camino de Santiago pilgrimage route. The Unterlinden Museum holds several panels from this master's Saint James cycle, making it the primary location for understanding this artist's narrative range and iconographic program. The subject blends the miraculous and the domestic in a manner characteristic of late medieval hagiographic painting, which delighted in concrete, legible narrative.

The master renders the miracle with the descriptive precision characteristic of northern devotional narrative painting, the resurrected chickens presented as the visual crux of the composition around which the judicial and miraculous drama resolves. The upper Rhine style combines Flemish spatial depth with a more graphic, emphatic approach to the narrative key moments.