St. Paul

Saint Paul is shown from the waist up, with a long sword in one hand and a closed book pressed to his chest. Around 1465 anyone in the church could read those two objects at once. The volume stands for the letters he wrote to the first Christian communities, and the sword for his death in Rome, beheaded, as tradition says befitted a Roman citizen. Pacher painted him for the predella, the low base of an altarpiece set just above the altar table, most likely in the parish church of St. Lorenzen in South Tyrol. The panel is Swiss stone pine, a tree of the high Alps. The green cover of the book has metal bosses and two strapped clasps. Behind the saint the gold carries a pattern of large curling leaves, and his halo is only a fine circle drawn into it.