Sant'Antonio abate

Correggio painted this around 1517, early in his career, and for a long time nobody knew it was his. It hung in a Naples church under another man's name until an X-ray settled the question in a surprising way. Beneath the surface lies a Madonna in Correggio's own early manner, which he painted over to make this saint, so his hand is there twice, one picture buried under the other. The old man is Saint Anthony Abbot, an Egyptian hermit of the third and fourth centuries who became the patron of monks. You can pick him out by the small bell hanging from his T-shaped staff. The panel later passed into the Farnese family's collection and travelled with it from Parma down to Naples in 1734.