Public collection via the Cleveland Museum of Art
AT-00009498Saint Nicholas of Bari
About the Artwork
Saint Nicolas of Bari, patron saint of children, sailors, and travelers, and the prototype of Father Christmas, was bishop of Myra (Lycia) in Asia Minor during the AD 300s. His remains were said to have been taken to Bari in Italy during the 11th century. The saint is shown vested as bishop in an elaborately embroidered cope, fastened with a morse, and holding a crosier. By the mid-1400s, most Florentine artists had stopped using gold backgrounds in their pictures, preferring instead naturalistic backgrounds of landscapes and blue skies. However, elsewhere in Italy gold-ground painting remained popular, as in this painting by Crivelli, a a painter of conservative Late Gothic decorative sensibility, who spent his early years in the Veneto where he absorbed influences from the Vivarini, Squarcione, and Mantegna. By 1458 he left the Veneto and was never to return; he spent most of the remainder of his career in the March of Ancona, where he developed a distinctive personal style that makes a contrast to his Venetian contemporary Giovanni Bellini.
Provenance
Cardinal Fesch (Rome sale 1845); W. Davenport-Bromley, Wooton Hall (London sale 1863); Baroness Kerbeck, Paris; (Knoedler)
Exhibition history
In Memoriam: Leonard C. Hanna, Jr.. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (March 4-April 7, 1958). Art and Humanism in the Renaissance. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (January 23-February 25, 1962). Ornament and Illusion: Carlo Crivelli of Venice. Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, MA (organizer) (October 22, 2015-January 25, 2016). Glory of Venice: Renaissance Paintings 1470–1520. North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, NC (March 4-June 1, 2017).
Data retrieved from the Cleveland Museum of Art on October 8, 2026. The museum may have updated its record since.
Quick Overview
- Artist
- Carlo Crivelli (Italian, 1430/35–1495)
- Date
- 1472
- Medium
- Tempera and gold leaf on wood panel
- Dimensions
- Framed: 109 x 41 x 6 cm (42 15/16 x 16 1/8 x 2 3/8 in.); Unframed: 96.2 x 32 cm (37 7/8 x 12 5/8 in.)
- Type
- Painting
- Classification
- Painting
- Department
- Medieval Art
- Credit line
- Gift of the Hanna Fund
- Accession no.
- 1952.111
More by Carlo Crivelli in museum collections
Open-access museum record · AT-00009498
Powered by Art Trackers