In the sky, a vision shows the Arma Christi, or Instruments of the Passion, in a tent whose hangings are pulled back by angels.Filedt Kok The scene is unusual in iconography, and has been explained by one scholar, S. Ringbom, in an interpretation not yet generally accepted, and recognised but not agreed by Jan Piet Filedt Kok in his Rijksmuseum catalogue.Filedt Kok: "Ringbom identified the two sumptuously attired women in the foreground as sibyls, prophetesses from classical antiquity, who are foretelling the coming of Christ, but other authors believe that the right to be in the enclosed garden was reserved for female saints" According to Ringbom, rather than being saints, the two women at the front of the gardens are sibyls. She finds "suggestive" of this "their dress and, in particular, their fancy headgear: helmet-like contraptions vaguely alluding to antiquity and the Orient".Ringbom, 183 Ringbom explores the possibility that the women in the background are also sibyls, but concludes that this is unlikely.Ringbom, 188
