The Justice of Trajan and Herkinbald

The Justice of Trajan and Herkinbald was a set of four large panels painted by the Flemish painter Rogier van der Weyden that decorated one wall of a court-room in the Town Hall of Brussels. They represented the Justice of Trajan, a Roman emperor, and the Justice of Herkinbald, a legendary Duke of Brabant. The panels were intended as a reminder to judges to dispense impartial justice and were admired by generations of visitors, including Albrecht Dürer.^[1]

They were destroyed when the city was bombarded by the French in 1695 and are now known only from descriptions and from a tapestry copy in the Historical Museum of Bern.^[2][3]

The work is thought to have preoccupied van der Weyden for several years, and is believed to have been, in conception and execution, on a scale and breadth and skill to equal Jan van Eyck's Ghent Altarpiece. The panels were recorded and described in a number of sources until the 17th century; especially detailed are the inscriptions on the frames, which are likely the same as those contained on the edges of the tapestry.^[4]