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Manufacturer
Gerard DavidPeriod and date
15de eeuwMASTERPIECE
Cambyses was a Persian king (shah) who ruled between 529–522 BC. His most famous feat was his conquest of Egypt. The Greek historian Herodotus, who was born about 50 years after Cambyses’s death and who lived until about 425 BC, described him as a mad, cruel ruler. He was still known as such as late as the fifteenth century. In these two panels, the painter Gerard David has depicted Cambyses’s punishment of the corrupt judge Sisamnes as if it took place in Bruges, in his own time. He did so by combining typical Renaissance elements – which reference to Classical Antiquity – such as the round reliefs on either side of Sisamnes’s seat, the putti and the garlands, with fifteenth-century buildings and men in contemporary attire. David’s intriguing work served to urge Bruges’s aldermen, who looked at it everyday in city hall, to be incorruptible and fair when performing their judicial duties.
