Saint Martin and the Beggar

This relief once stood over the portal of the convent of San Martino at Avesa, a few kilometres outside Verona, the same community whose abbess ordered the Fracanzani altarpiece now in this museum. It shows the story every visitor knew, the young Roman soldier Martin meeting a freezing beggar at the gate of Amiens and cutting his cloak in half to clothe him. On a scroll in the stone the sculptor incised and painted the year, 1436.

Cleaning revealed how much of the colour remains, and it is far subtler than the broad, flat paint of the 14th-century statues nearby. The horse is still grey and the saddle green. Martin's tunic is a warm brown, the scabbard keeps traces of red velvet, and the pink of the faces survives in places, with remnants of flowers and sky. The museum sets this softness beside the paintings Pisanello was making in Verona in the very same years.