BOUTS, Dieric the Elder
(b. ca. 1415, Haarlem, d. 1475, Leuven)

The Ordeal by Fire (detail)

c. 1460
Oil on wood
Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels

In the second panel, the Emperor is giving an audience to the widow. She kneels before him to ask for reparation. In one hand she holds the livid head of her dead husband, and in the other a bar of red hot iron. The bar does not burn her, thus proving the innocence of her dead husband.