Jacopo di Cione and workshop, 'Saint Luke', about 1365-70

We see a youthful saint with a light beard carefully writing. He wears a golden tunic and a mauve robe. An open book balances rather dangerously in the crook of his left arm. He grips an ink pot in his left hand and uses a quill pen. Someone has made this pen from a feather by stripping away its barbs and cutting the end to form a nib.

This may be Saint Luke, one of the evangelists, who wrote one of the four Gospels. Artists showed these holy figures writing in or holding books – just like other saints who were writers. However, it is difficult to be certain exactly who this figure represents. We usually recognise Saint Luke by his symbol of an ox, as in Andrea di Bonaiuto da Firenze’s Virgin and Child with Ten Saints (National Gallery, London). Sometimes painters show Luke as an artist, often painting the Virgin Mary, like in Quinten Massys’s Saint Luke painting the Virgin and Child (National Gallery, London). This is because Luke was the patron saint of painters and physicians.

This painting is one of 12 small panels called the Littleton Pilaster Saints. The National Gallery now has six of them on loan. They were probably originally from the side supporting sections of a large multi-panelled altarpiece or polyptych. The Cione brothers painted this for the church of Santa Maria degli Angeli in Florence. You can see similar full-length saints next to the central panel of Jacopo di Cione’s Crucifixion (National Gallery, London).

The paintings of Saint Luke and of Saint John the Evangelist (National Gallery, London) are somewhat wider than the other panels, at just under 16 centimetres. They could have stood next to the base of the altarpiece, with Saints Luke and John next to each other on the left-hand side, looking across to the centre. Or they may have been stacked one on top of the other, right beside the central panel.

Italian Renaissance artists were experts at gilding. They used many different tools and techniques to create texture and contrast in a panel. The Littleton evangelists stand against shimmering burnished gold backgrounds. Their feet rest on decorative textile floors. Curved frames with decorative points surround them. The backgrounds and haloes are water-gilded over a red base material. This shows through in places where the gold has worn thin. The artists incised and stamped these areas to highlight the saints’ haloes. They patterned them with a rosette punch and then stamped with many small dots to give texture (granulated). This technique is very similar to that used for Mary Magdalene in Jacopo di Cione’s Noli me tangere (National Gallery, London), probably from the same altarpiece. The artists also granulated the gilded edges of the saint’s robes and the red and gold textile where he stands. This creates contrast to the smooth burnished gold behind the figure. The whole effect would have glittered and sparkled in the candlelight of the medieval church.