Saint Maurice was one bad dude who stood up for what he believed in.

The story of Saint Maurice is pretty inspirational, as far as Bible stories go. Although it’s not really a successful underdog story like David and Goliath or Esther and Ahasuerus, it was popular and well-known during the late Middle Ages and Renaissance.

Saint Mauritius, now Maurice, was a native of Thebes in Egypt. He commanded a legion that was comprised of all Christian soldiers that usually fought in the East. However, Maurice had to travel to the West to assist the Roman Emperor Maximian. Maximian, along with his co-emperor Diocletian, were working to suppress the spread of Christianity in the Roman Empire. During one of the battles in which Maurice was assisting Maximian, Maximian ordered Maurice and his soldiers to slaughter the Christians of Gaul. When Maurice refused, he and his army were killed and became instant Christian martyrs. Maurice, in particular, suffered a gruesome beheading. Lucas Cranach the Elder might have chosen to accentuate Maurice’s sword as a reference to the means of his untimely death.

The story behind this enigmatic figure is just the top layer. The people who owned this painting, which was originally the left wing of an altarpiece, also deserve our attention. Cardinal Albrecht of Brandenburg, one of the richest and most powerful in the Holy Roman Empire, probably commissioned this work. This guy loved art; he had an astounding art collection, featuring 16 altarpieces by Cranach and his workshop, plus a collection of over 8,200 Christian relics.

Cardinal Albrecht also loved when other people knew how awesome his collection was. He established the collegiate church at Halle just to show off his sweet art. For those who couldn’t make the trip to Halle to see his art and relic collections, Cardinal Albrecht even commissioned a book with descriptions and woodcut illustrations of 235 of his relics. He even got Renaissance superstar Albrecht Dürer to design the book’s frontispiece, which was a portrait of the Cardinal.

The piece stayed within Habsburg hands until about 1906, when it then started circulating around private collections in the United States. Effectively disappearing for almost sixty years, no one knew where this piece was located between 1946 and 2005, when the painting’s last private owner donated the piece to the Met upon her death. Mrs. Eva F. Kollsman was the second wife of aeronautical engineer Paul Kollsman, who made a fortune as an inventor. Mrs. Kollsman had begun independent research on the piece in Met’s library the 1970s, so she knew it was probably a big deal and belonged at the museum. Thanks, girl!