Saints James and Anthony of Padua with a Nun

A small nun kneels between two saints and holds up a reliquary, a little container for a holy relic, toward Anthony of Padua. Pictures like this followed a fixed pattern. A donor knelt, a patron saint presented her, and everyone stood stiffly in place. Tommaso da Modena loosens it, as the museum points out. Anthony, in his brown Franciscan habit, rests his hand kindly on the nun's head. James turns to speak for her, his pilgrim's staff on his shoulder and his robe stamped with little gold shells, the badge of pilgrims who had reached his shrine at Santiago de Compostela.

Above, in the gable, an angel raises his hand in greeting, the angel of an Annunciation. The panel is only 45 centimetres high, one piece of a polyptych whose other parts are lost. It came to the museum with the collection of the Monga family of Verona.