Saint Blaise and a Bishop Saint

The church of Santi Nazaro e Celso in Verona still keeps four large pieces of the altarpiece this panel came from, a Pietà and figures of saints. Bartolomeo Montagna painted the whole polyptych for its high altar between 1500 and 1502, and this part reached the museum with the collection of Cesare Bernasconi.

The old man in the white mitre is Saint Blaise, bishop of Sebaste in Armenia. In his gloved hand he holds a wooden carding comb set with iron teeth, the kind of tool used on wool, and in his legend the instrument with which his flesh was torn before he was beheaded. His companion, younger and tonsured, carries a crozier but no other sign, and the museum does not name him. Montagna also frescoed the chapel of San Biagio in the same church. Here he draws a green curtain back behind the two men, and against the dark ground the museum reads both faces as true, forceful portraits.