Story of saint Nicholas

The altarpiece these panels came from was painted in 1437 for the chapel of Saint Nicholas in San Domenico at Perugia, and it stayed there for nearly four centuries. Then Napoleon's administration arrived. In 1810 Vivant Denon, director of the Louvre and the man who chose what France took out of Italy, picked two panels from its predella and had them sent to Paris. After Waterloo the sculptor Antonio Canova was given the task of recovering Italian art, and he got them back in 1815. They did not go home to Perugia. They went into the Vatican picture gallery, where they remain, while the rest of the dismembered altarpiece hangs in the National Gallery of Umbria. Each panel is 35 centimetres high and holds three episodes of the saint's life, from his birth to a ship saved from sinking off the coast of Myra.