Saint James Minor

This panel of Saint James Minor by the Master of Saint Francis formed part of the same dispersed altarpiece from San Francesco al Prato in Perugia as the companion panels now divided between the National Gallery of Art and the Metropolitan Museum. The Master of Saint Francis was the preeminent painter of mid-thirteenth-century Umbria, and this series of monumental apostle figures represents some of the finest surviving examples of Italian painting from the decades before Cimabue and Giotto transformed the art.

Painted in egg tempera on gold-ground panel, the saint is depicted in the Master's characteristic style combining Byzantine solemnity with a growing interest in individual characterization. The figure's drapery falls in broad, rhythmic folds with white highlights that suggest emerging volumetric awareness.