Quentin Metsys, Diptych of Erasmus of Rotterdam and Pieter Gilles (c. 1517)

In 1517, Thomas More received a diptych of his friends, the humanists Erasmus of Rotterdam and Pieter Gillis.  Painted by the Antwerp-based artist Quentin Metsys, it showed each in a space that would not look out of place in a depiction of St Jerome.  Erasmus was depicted writing his Paraphrase on Romans; Gillis, holding a letter from More (with More’s handwriting simulated).  More was delighted, praising Metsys as a new Apelles. The books labelled on the shelves – The Praise of Folly, Lucian, Jerome, and the New Testament among them – were all works either written, translated, or edited by Erasmus: his works were represented at the heart of this friendship, a statement of the central role he and they played in the burgeoning Republic of Letters.  More understood this well.  Responding to Gillis, he wrote an epigram in the voice of the painting: ‘I can provide an image, but writings offer the soul.’

Credit: Oren Margolis (July 2018)