
Moretto da Brescia · PD
Sainte Justine avec la licorne, vénérée par un donateur
Détails
L'histoire
For almost two centuries this panel hung under the wrong name. When it first turns up in a 1662 Habsburg inventory, on its way from the Hofburg to Ambras Castle, it is listed as a Titian. A later inventory reassigned it to Pordenone, and only in 1845 did a restorer give it back to its real author, Moretto of Brescia, who painted it around 1530. Saint Justina stands calm in gold and white, the patron saint of nearby Padua, a small white unicorn resting at her side as the old sign of her virginity. At her feet a donor kneels in profile, gazing up, the man who paid for the picture, though no document survives to tell us his name.




