St. John of Capistrano

Bartolomeo Vivarini's Saint John of Capistrano, painted around 1459 for the Louvre, depicts the Franciscan preacher who rallied European forces against the Ottoman advance. John of Capistrano's role in the 1456 siege of Belgrade made him a hero of Christian resistance, and his image proliferated in the years following his death in the same year. Bartolomeo Vivarini led one of the most productive workshops in fifteenth-century Venice alongside his brother Antonio, executing altarpieces for churches throughout the Venetian territories.

The Franciscan friar is rendered in the rich, colorful manner of the Vivarini workshop, with careful attention to the grey habit and the saint's ascetic features painted in the detailed Venetian technique.