Why it matters
The corrupt Persian judge Sisamnes is arrested and flayed alive on the orders of King Cambyses; in the background, his son dispenses justice from a chair draped with his father's skin. The town of Bruges hung it in its town hall to encourage honesty among magistrates.
Did you know?
- It was commissioned in 1487–1488.
- It also served as a symbolic apology for Bruges' imprisonment of Maximilian I in 1488.
- In 2012 protesters showed reproductions of it to judges in Ukraine and Russia.
Based on the Wikipedia article The Judgement of Cambyses (CC BY-SA 4.0).
