Saint James

This was not made to hang on a wall. It is a processional standard, a large painted banner carried through the streets of Florence by a lay confraternity, the Compagnia del Nicchio, whose name means the shell, the pilgrim's badge of Saint James. The two boys beside the saint wear the white robes of that company, and the one on the left holds a small green book, the rules the members lived by. Andrea painted it around 1528, and he may well have belonged to the confraternity himself. What stays with you is how ordinary the holy figure is made to feel. James has stopped mid-journey, his pilgrim's staff still in hand, and bends to touch one of the kneeling children with real gentleness, the way a man might steady his own son.