Oil painting on panel 168 x 133 cm., attributed to the Master of Los Balbases, Burgos, Spain, c. 1495 Iconography The miracle is the painless amputation of the ulcerated leg of a Christian verger, and the substition of the undiseased leg of a dead Moor. For a survey of the iconography see E Rinaldi, 'The first homoplastic limb transplant according to the legend of saint Cosmas and saint Damian', Italian Journal of Orthopedics and Traumatology, 1987, 13(3): 393-406 and Douglas B Price, 'Miraculous restoration of lost body parts: relationship to the phantom limb phenomenon and to limb-burial superstition and practices', in W D Hand (ed) American folk medicine, Berkeley, California, 1976, pp. 49-71. Attribution The Wellcome painting was attributed by Chandler Rathfon Post to Alonso de Sedano: see C R Post, A history of Spanish painting, Cambridge, Mass., Vol. 4, Part ii (1933), pp. 202-210; Vol. 5 (1934), pp. 326-331; Vol. 9 (1947), pp. 800-803. Post's attribution rested initially on the stylistic resemblance between the Wellcome picture, an altar-piece of Saint Sebastian in the cathedral of Palma de Mallorca (documented as painted by Pedro Terrenchs and Alonso de Sedano c. 1486/1496), and six-panels of an altar piece from Burgos cathedral now in the Diocesan Museum, Burgos. Post was later provided with a document which indicated that the Burgos cathedral panels were painted by Alonso de Sedano before 8 July 1496, and which therefore provided a name for the painter of the Wellcome picture also. However, the Burgos cathedral panels are now divided between two painters, one being Alonso de Sedano, who may have painted seven of the eleven paintings, and the other called the Master of Los Balbases, to whom are attributed both the remaining four Burgos Cathedral panels and a painting of Saint Roch suffering from the plague, in the church of St Stephen in the nearby town of Los Balbases, from which his sobriquet derives. Of the Burgos Cathedral paintings, the painting of the Nativity attributed to the Master of Los Balbases has many specific points of close resemblance with the Wellcome picture, whereas the painting of the Crucifixion attributed to Alonso de Sedano appears to have none: these two paintings are reproduced in Vlaanderen en Castilla y León: op de drempel van Europa, Antwerp: Kathedraal Antwerpen, 1995, pp. 192 and 356, entries by Pilar Silva Maroto and D Jose Ignacio Hernandez Redondo respectively. The latter mentions the possibility that the Master of Los Balbases could be the painter Andrés Sánchez de Oña, who is documented at Burgos between 1484 and 1510. The Wellcome painting was probably painted for the sacristy of SS. Cosme y Damiàn, Burgos, where a later copy of the painting was noted by Post. Provenance Bought by Henry S Wellcome in Seville in 1930.