Lapidation of St Stephen

Dressed as a deacon the first martyr, St Stephen, kneels in an attitude of prayer on stone strewn sandy ground and is turned at an angle to the left. Three henchmen stand behind him and prepare to stone him to death. The central figure is a man in a light red knee-length dress, who holds a boulder with both hands above his head, which he is about to hurl at the martyr. He stretches bolt upright in preparation to strike out and towers above the other figures. A further henchman stands with his back to the viewer on the right in the foreground. He has a long slightly bent double-handed sword in his belt, he wears striped leggings and a short doublet under which a white shirt is visible at the waist. Inclined slightly to the left, his torso is bent forward into the pictorial space and he raises his right arm to strike out with a stone [...]. His bearded face is almost turned in profile and his gaze is fixed on his victim. His brown hair is knoted together above his parting and his hat is tied around his shoulder with a cloth. Directly behind him a man wearing dark clothing bends down and collects stones from the ground. He holds fist-size lumps in each hand. On the left behind the central stone-thrower another bearded man in a grey robe storms forward with a boulder the size of a human head under his right arm. A tree rises up to the edge of the painting behind this figure and roughly marks the central axis. The figures occupy on the whole the space to the right; on the left a landscape in the background serves as a counterbalance. Three ascending hills covered with bushes and pine trees and staggered one behind the other expand both the depth of the pictorial space and the height. Above on the left a rocky outcrop with a castle is visible against the cloudless blue sky.

[Cat. Frankfurt 2005, 243-246]