Due to its small size and arched format it should be a work of domestic use, a devotional altarpiece with one or perhaps more figured compartments. Curated with the finesse of a miniature with a transparent and very thin pictorial material, the composition presents a singular synthesis of archaism and modernity. While an accentuated formal linearism – fruit of the anchoring to the Gothic culture of the Flemish primitives – characterizes the figures, the opening onto an articulated background landscape pervades the whole of the fantastic atmospheres of a more advanced age, recalling the results of the painting of Joachim Patinir and Jan van Scorel around 1520. The situation can be explained by a phenomenon of figurative revival that developed in the Netherlands at the beginning of the 16th century, when shops specialized in the pictorial or sculptural reproduction of the works of their illustrious predecessors flourished between Antwerp and Amsterdam, in particular Jan van Eyck, Robert Campin, Rogier van der Weyden and Hugo van der Goes. A return to the 15th century golden season partly determined by a phase of creative exhaustion, which significantly contributed to the precocious fortune of the art of the Flemish primitives in Europe.