Saints Dorothy and Christina

Both women wear crowns and both were martyrs, so the painter gave each the object that let people in the 1490s tell them apart. Dorothy carries a basket and lifts a single rose between her fingers. In her legend a pagan lawyer named Theophilus mocked her on the way to her execution and asked her to send him fruit from her bridegroom's garden. A child then brought him roses and fruit, and he became a Christian. Here a small haloed child in a long pink robe reaches up toward the basket.

Christina holds a round millstone at her side. The story goes that she was thrown into a lake weighed down with a heavy stone, and an angel saved her. The two stand on a floor of square tiles, against a gold ground patterned with leafy branches.