The Vision of St. Helena

Helena was the mother of the Roman emperor Constantine, and Christian tradition credits her with travelling to Jerusalem in old age and finding the cross on which Christ was crucified. Painters usually showed her standing in triumph beside it. Veronese, working in Venice around 1580, chose the quieter moment before any of that. She is asleep, seated, her head propped on one hand in a rich silk gown, while a small winged child at her feet holds up the cross she has yet to go and find. The idea of the discovery reaching her in a dream, rather than as a finished victory, was unusual for Venetian art of the time. The painting now hangs in the Vatican's picture gallery.