Coronation of the Virgin with Saint Lucy and Saint Nicholas of Tolentino

One of the two saints standing beside this Coronation of the Virgin is worth a second look. He is Nicholas of Tolentino, an Augustinian friar who had died in 1305, and here, around 1375, Catarino has already given him a halo and painted him as a saint. Rome would not actually canonize Nicholas until 1446, some 70 years after this altarpiece was made. The gap is the interesting thing. His cult, pushed hardest by his own Augustinian order, ran well ahead of the official ceremony, and a Venetian painter could treat him as a confirmed saint long before the Church formally agreed. Beside him stands Saint Lucy, the martyr from Syracuse in Sicily, holding her attribute. Above them Christ crowns the Virgin against tooled gold, the whole thing signed by Catarino though he left it undated, so the year is judged from its style.