Eleven Saints

Most of the crowd on this gold-ground panel is what you would expect to find. Saint Peter takes the place of honour and Saint James carries his pilgrim's staff. Around them stand an Evangelist, probably John, two deacons and two bishops, with a Benedictine monk, probably Benedict himself, and a nun who may be his sister Scholastica. Two old men are the surprise. One holds a knife, the other a flame, and scholars read them as patriarchs of the Old Testament, Abraham with the knife he raised over his son Isaac, and Moses with the burning bush where God spoke to him. The panel was one wing of a large altarpiece painted around 1365, and its gabled top matches exactly the width of a pinnacle panel now in the National Gallery in London. Where the altarpiece first stood is not known. The National Gallery's catalogue weighs several homes for it, among them the bishop's own chapel in the archbishop's palace in Florence.