Saint Agatha crowned by Angels

This is a small thing, barely the size of a sheet of paper, painted around 1580 for private devotion rather than an altar. It shows Agatha, a young woman of Catania in Sicily who, according to her legend, was tortured and killed in the 3rd century for refusing a Roman official, and who became the city's protector. Sicilians carried her veil in procession against the eruptions of Mount Etna and against fire, trusting it to turn back the lava. Veronese paints the aftermath of her ordeal rather than the violence: angels lower a crown onto her, the martyr's reward. By this date he ran one of the busiest workshops in Venice, yet a picture this small, now in the Uffizi, was made to be held in the hand and studied up close.