The Transfiguration of Christ

Around 1518 Pordenone painted this for the chapel of a castle, San Salvatore, the seat of the Collalto counts in the hills north of Treviso. It is small for an altarpiece, a little over 90 centimetres tall, because it is only the middle of one. Two wings once flanked it, each carrying a pair of saints.

The scene is the moment on the mountain when three of the apostles watch Christ change in front of them and stand in light with Moses and Elijah beside him. Pordenone worked it in tempera on a wooden panel, the older technique, at a time when Venetian painting had largely gone over to oil on canvas.

The triptych was broken up and the pieces went their separate ways. The wing with Saint Peter and Saint Prosdocimus, the first bishop of Padua, is now in the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh. The other, with John the Baptist and Jerome, has never been traced.