The Consecration of Saint Nicholas

The story here is about being chosen without asking for it. At Myra, so the legend goes, a voice announced that the next bishop should be the first man named Nicholas to enter the cathedral at dawn, and when the young Nicholas duly arrived he was consecrated on the spot, kneeling in a robe of emerald green as an older bishop lays hands on him. Veronese painted this in 1562 as one of three altarpieces for the abbey church of San Benedetto Po, near Mantua, which had just been rebuilt on grand lines by Giulio Romano. He was in his early thirties and it was a plum commission. Vasari, who knew many of the artists he wrote about, singled the picture out for praise. It left the abbey during the upheavals of the Napoleonic years and eventually reached London.