La Vision de saint Eustache

A Roman general named Placidus is out hunting when a stag turns its head and shows him a crucifix glowing between its antlers, the vision that converts him and makes him Saint Eustace. Pisanello paints the moment as a courtly hunt from his own world of about 1440, the horseman reined in and richly dressed, the dark wood behind him filled with animals rendered with the care of a naturalist, hounds, a stag, birds, a bear, a hare. He was one of the great medal-makers of the Italian courts, and that jeweller's eye is everywhere in the fine gold and the exact creatures. The holy encounter almost disappears into the sheer pleasure of the hunt around it.