A Martyr Saint and Saint Clare

The nun on the right is Saint Clare, and her face looks unusually particular for a devotional image. White linen frames it tightly against a black habit, which throws all the attention onto her steady gaze. It may be less a generic saint than a portrait. The panels once flanked a small altar beneath the nuns' choir on the island of Murano, in a convent that an abbess named Chiara Ogniben Sustan had reformed for Augustinian sisters in 1437, and the painted Clare may be a tribute to her. Beside her stands a second holy woman, a martyr whose name is now lost. The two were separated for a long stretch. The martyr spent roughly 80 years in Vienna, from 1838 until 1919, before returning to Venice.