Saint Zenobius Restores the Sight of a Blind Man

Zenobius was bishop of Florence around the year 400 and his shrine is still in the cathedral. The scene is one of his miracles, a blind man given back his sight on the church steps, and Mehus, a Fleming who spent his career in Medici service, paints the instant it happens, the bishop's hand on the man's eyes and every face around him caught in shock.

The landscape behind is Florence itself. Brunelleschi's dome and Giotto's bell tower stand in the evening light at the back of the picture, which puts a miracle of the year 400 in the city the visitor has just walked through to get here.

The man who ordered it, Leopoldo de' Medici, the grand duke's younger brother and a cardinal from 1667, wanted it for the altar of his private chapel upstairs in this same palace.