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the vestment of Saint Lawrence inscribed with the coat-of-arms of King Philip II of Spain both oil on panel The present pair of paintings are the wings of an as yet unknown-- but what must have been highly important-- triptych. The scale of the figures is very grand and the quality of the panels extremely high, and it must have been intended for a prominent site. It would appear, based on the compositions and the marks left by the original hinges of the altarpiece, that the figure of Saint John the Baptist would have been the left wing, and the figure of Saint John the Evangelist the right wing, each in their lushly green and finely articulated landscapes. The Baptist sits leaning with one hand on a rock, his other hand raised to indicate his smaller self in the distance performing the Baptism of Christ. He is surrounded by all of his attributes: the lamb, the reed cross, the beggar's bowl and the honeycomb. Similarly, the Evangelist is seated in the artist's lush interpretation of the Patmian countryside. He looks up to the distant vision of the Virgin and the apocalyptic many-headed beast, his inspired hand gliding along the pages of his open book. The eagle, his symbol, holds an inkwell. Presumably the central figure of the triptych must have been the Virgin herself, also depicted in a verdant landscape. The closed triptych, however, gives a very interesting clue about the possible provenance of the picture. The two saints facing each other, Saints Catherine of Alexandria and Saint Lawrence, would appear to be associated with a particular patron and in fact Saint Lawrence sports, on the color of his elaborately embroidered dalmatic, the arms of King Philip II of Spain (1527-1598) (see fig. 1), and correspond exactly to the arms found on his tomb. Philip II had a special association with Saint Lawrence; his great palace of the Escorial was in fact built around a monastery dedicated to that saint (although martyrologies give his place of death ai ferri