English: Illustration of the life and martyrdom of Ferdinand the Holy Prince (Fernando o Infante Santo), a Portuguese royal prince who died in captivity in Fez (Morocco) in 1443, as included in the 17th C. Bollandist collection
Acta Sanctorum (Antwerp) for the first volume of the month of June (vol.20), first published in 1695 (
p.561). This is the only known image which represents Ferdinand the Holy Prince with a saintly nimbus. In the accompanying note (
p.562), the Bollandist author Daniel Paperbrock writes that he united in one image ten small tables (
accipe una in tabula tabellas decem) sent to him that were said to be originally ten woodcuts in a 1577 quarto edition of the chronicle of the prince's life by Frei João Álvares, and he supposes they were originally copied from an altar retable and that they originally did not have any nimbus. (
quas ex altaris praedicti tabula sumptas, licet radios nullos hic videas) (Note: the only existing copy of the 1577 edition of Álvares chronicle, held by the national library in Lisbon is of octavo size has no such woodcuts; the retable Paperbrock refers to is probably the tryptych (lost since c.1808) at Ferdinand's chapel at Batalha monastery that was ostensibly painted in 1539 by Cristóvão de Figueiredo, commissioned in the will of dowager-queen Eleanor of Viseu (widow of John II of Portugal). This
Acta Sanctorum image is the only visual trace that remains of the original 1539 retable piece.