Tour: Saints

This is one of Zurbarán’s most austere and intensely spiritual works. Saint Francis is shown kneeling in fervent prayer, his clasped hands cradling a skull. Shadow obscures his face, giving us only a glimpse of his features. He wears the robe of the Franciscans, the religious order he founded in...

Saint George taming then slaying a dragon is one of the most fantastic saints‘ legends of the Middle Ages. Uccello has compressed two parts of the story into one small and strange picture. The saint plunges his spear into the head of a dragon, whose odd shape mirrors the entrance to his cave. An...

The saints arranged here neatly in rows are looking towards the central panel of the complex, four-tiered altarpiece that this picture comes from, which shows Christ crowning the Virgin Mary. This scene is mirrored on a panel on the other side of the central image. Together, these three panels to...

This small double-sided painting was most probably made for private worship. The front shows Saint Jerome kneeling in front of a crucifix wedged into the stump of a tree. He beats his chest with a rock in empathy with Christ’s Passion (his torture and death at the Crucifixion). The lion resting b...

Saint Genevieve, born in the fifth century, is the patron saint of Paris. She was a nun, and helped protect the city from attack from the Huns and the Franks. Here, she holds the candle that miraculously relit after the devil blew it out while she was praying alone one night.Saint Apollonia was a...

Catherine of Alexandria, a fourth-century princess, was converted to Christianity and in a vision underwent a mystic marriage with Christ. When she would not give up her faith, Emperor Maxentius ordered that she be bound to a spiked wheel and tortured to death. However, a thunderbolt destroyed th...

This is the central panel of a small triptych (a painting in three parts), probably commissioned by Sir John Donne in the late 1470s. In it, he kneels before the Virgin and Christ Child, facing his wife Elizabeth and one of their daughters. They are accompanied by their patron saints Catherine an...

A man sits in a luxuriously furnished room, painting a picture. This is Saint Luke, patron saint of painters and physicians. Many of the objects around him refer to these professions, and his symbol, the ox, lies at his side.The picture is full of information on how Renaissance painters worked. S...

This little panel, which is also decorated on the reverse, shows Saint Dorothy with Jesus, a toddler, carrying a basket of roses. She caries a stem of roses in bloom and bud and gazes tenderly at the boy. Saint Dorothy was martyred for her faith in the city of Caesarea (in modern-day Turkey), in...

According to the Gospel of Matthew, an angel appears to the Virgin Mary’s husband, Joseph, in a dream. Champaigne shows the angel gesturing towards both heaven and the Virgin Mary, confirming that Christ has been conceived through the Holy Ghost. Kneeling in front of an open Bible, Mary glances t...

This altarpiece is considered Ortolano’s masterpiece. In it he achieves effects of startling realism through his deep understanding of anatomy, optics and perspective. It was made for the church of S. Maria in Bondeno, a small town to the north-west of Ferrara.Saints Sebastian (centre) and Roch (...

This panel of the Archangel Michael fighting the Devil was once part of an altarpiece painted by Crivelli for the church of San Domenico in Ascoli Piceno in the Italian Marche. Michael is shown as a youthful prince, his sword raised with nonchalant ease to strike the writhing devil beneath his fe...