Beheading of Saint James the Great: Predella Panel

Saint James kneels in prayer, and behind him an executioner lifts his sword. James the Great was the first of Christ's apostles to die for his faith, killed on the orders of King Herod Agrippa in Jerusalem in the year 44. In Pistoia he mattered more than most saints, because he is the patron of the town.

This little scene was once part of a single wooden plank about 221 centimetres long that carried all five stories of the predella. After it was sawn up, four of the scenes turned up in the buildings of San Desiderio, a former convent in Pistoia that was later turned into a factory. They were shown at an exhibition in Pistoia in 1899, crossed to New York into the collection of the banker Felix Warburg, and in 1937 he and his wife gave them to the National Gallery through the Art Fund.