A man kneels in prayer, his patron saint, Peter – identifiable by the key he holds – standing behind him. This panel was once the left wing of a triptych (a painting in three parts). The other wing, Saint Paul and a Donatrix, shows his wife with Saint Paul. We don't know who the donors were, but they were clearly wealthy people. The man seems to be in his thirties or forties, and is dressed in the style of around 1515.

These figures, and the missing central panel, would have been visible when the altarpiece was open. On the back of this panel, visible when the altarpiece was closed, is Saint Jerome, monk, hermit and translator of the Bible. He is painted in grisaille to look like a stone statue in a niche – a very popular effect in the Netherlands in the early Renaissance.

Saint Jerome is shown wearing a cardinal’s robes. While there were no cardinals in the fifth century, Jerome was the pope’s secretary; in such a role by the fifteenth century he would have been expected to be a cardinal. He holds an open book, presumably the Vulgate, the standard Latin text of the Bible which he spent so many years producing. Endearingly, a small lion jumps up at him like an eager dog. While Jerome was living as a hermit in the desert he removed a thorn from a lion’s foot and it became his devoted companion.