This panel is believed to be by Pau Vergós, the most talented in a Barcelona family of painters that included his brother Rafael and his father and grandfather, both named Jaime. It was once part of a larger group of religious images placed prominently on the altar of a church. Altarpieces featured scenes of Christianity’s central stories and representations of its important figures, and served as a visual and spiritual focal point for worshipers during the Catholic mass. The altarpiece to which this panel belonged, now long since dispersed, originally adorned a church in Catalonia in northeastern Spain, probably in Barcelona. From its size, we know this altarpiece would have been large and sumptuous.

The panel depicts a vision that appeared to a French nobleman named Eleazar de Sabran (1285–1325), known in Catalonia as Ausias. Stricken by a fever, Ausias was overcome with remorse for having fought in a recent war. Christ appeared to him and struck him three times with a scourge in punishment for his deeds. Afterward, Ausias led a life of great sanctity and was later made a saint. Here, the artist has combined the three strokes of Christ’s scourge into one triple blow, which slices powerfully through Ausias’s resplendent gold armor as he kneels in penitence.