As I had the day off yesterday with nothing much to do, I decided to spend a couple of hours at the National Gallery of Art, just a 15 minute or so walk from our place. It’s always been one of my favorite places in DC, going back to when I used to come here on trips during college.

One painting that particularly struck me this time around was “The Baptism of Christ” by “The Master of the Saint Bartholomew Altar,” sometimes referred to as the last Gothic painter of Cologne.

As the informative web page for this painting says, the Master “combined the naturalism of artists in the Netherlands with the abstract, otherworldly qualities of earlier German painting.”

One thing I love about this painting is the motley assortment of saints that surrounds the central image. You’ve got St. George perched on the corpse of his dragon, some monk-looking guy with a knife plunged into his back, some bearded ogre-looking dude with another weird little guy sitting on his shoulders. A nice reminder that the church truly is “catholic,” or “it takes all kinds.” Not to mention that the communion of saints is properly oriented around Christ as its center.