The Justice of Trajan and Herkinbald

The Justice of Trajan and Herkinbald was a set of four large panels painted by the Early Netherlandish painter Rogier van der Weyden that decorated one wall of a court-room in the Town Hall of Brussels.

The panels were intended as a reminder to judges to dispense impartial justice and were admired by generations of visitors, including Albrecht Dürer.

The second panel depicted the story in the Golden Legend of Pope Gregory I's miraculous resurrection and conversion of Trajan, thus releasing him from Purgatory.

[2][7] Both Nicholas of Cusa (in 1453) and Dubuisson-Aubenay (in the 1620s) mentioned that the work contained a self-portrait, generally thought to be faithfully reproduced in the 'Herkinbald slaying his nephew' passage.

[7] In the passages depicting Pope Gregory I, one of the bystanders is more finely and carefully worked than the others, and this is almost certainly a copy of the self-portrait that van der Weyden had originally incorporated in his painting.