Abstract

The antique story of the flaying of a corrupt judge, ordered by the Persian King Cambyses, generated an abundance of medieval literature. In the visual arts, the fifteenth century painting Judgment of Cambyses by Gerard David was a milestone in how the story was depicted. David represented it in four scenes : the bribery, the arrest of the judge, the flaying, and the installation of the son on his father’s skin spread over the seat. The better-known Christian iconographical tradition of the flaying of Saint Bartholomew was likely a direct inspiration for David, as well as for some miniaturists. It is my hypothesis that the refined but cruel realism of the painting is the result of a diligent observation of animal flaying—and not of a judicial practice of human flaying. In addition to this, increasingly popular representations of anatomical lessons were also a useful source of inspiration for the elaboration of the diptych. Furthermore, many scholars have interpreted the painting as an early group portrait in disguise of Bruges’ aldermen. After David, the depiction of the bribery and the arrest scenes in the Cambyses tale disappeared. Artists started concentrating on the moment of the installation of the young judge on the skin of his father, often with the flaying scene on the background. The Cambyses story, ultimately represented through an emblematic stripped-off skin, was, just as many other exemplary representations of justice, to be replaced by a symbolic iconographic representation of Lady Justice. If flaying was represented at all, it was reserved for other subjects, such as the Marsyas legend, the martyrdom of St Bartholomew and the artistic expression of anatomical structures of the human body.