Stories of Saint Stephen

In December 415 a priest named Lucian, who served a village church about 20 miles from Jerusalem, reported a dream. Gamaliel, the teacher of Saint Paul, had appeared to him and told him where the body of Stephen, the first Christian martyr, lay buried. Bishop John of Jerusalem had the field dug, the bones were found, and within a few years relics of Stephen were travelling around the Mediterranean, with cures reported wherever they arrived.

About nine centuries later Bernardo Daddi told that story in eight small panels, each about 30 centimetres wide, set along the base of an altarpiece that has never been identified. He followed the Golden Legend, the medieval book of saints' lives. From the left come the stoning of Stephen, Gamaliel appearing to the sleeping Lucian, Lucian reporting to the bishop, the opening of the graves, and the body carried into Jerusalem, where it freed an emperor's daughter from an evil spirit. Then the relics go on to Rome.

The last two scenes are set at San Lorenzo outside the walls, where Stephen was laid in the tomb of Saint Lawrence, another deacon and martyr. In the Legend, Lawrence moved aside to make room for him. In the final panel the poor and the sick crowd around the shared grave to pray. The museum dates the set to around 1345, late in Daddi's career.