This is a surviving wing of an altarpiece that I assume has been lost somewhere over time. It all looks like it’s a medieval Lübeck painting which depicts a scene in which nobody has had time to hold a proper planning meeting, but it appears that it is of religious significance. The prophet Elijah is being taken up to heaven in a fiery chariot, while Elisha, his follower and successor, kneels below and reaches towards him. I’d add that I didn’t know that, I copied it from the information panel at the museum.
The panel was painted in Lübeck at the end of the fifteenth century, at a time when the city still had the wealth, workshops and devotional culture to produce works of real beauty like this. I was strangely drawn to this, although I think I’m always intrigued by things where half the artwork is missing, or over half in this case. I don’t have the religious knowledge to make much comment about the artwork and I’m not sure I even understand the museum’s account that it “could be read as a prefiguration of Christ’s ascension”.
It’s painted on pine and is in reasonably good shape, although the museum doesn’t know where it came from other than they acquired it in 1866. There’s a level of awe that the average fifteenth century viewer of this artwork might have perhaps thought, I rather like it.