Saints Bartholomew and Simon

This panel depicting Saints Bartholomew and Simon by the Master of Saint Francis, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is part of the celebrated dispersed altarpiece from San Francesco al Prato in Perugia. The pairing of these two apostles on a single panel indicates they flanked one side of a larger altarpiece structure. The Master of Saint Francis's apostle series represents one of the most important surviving ensembles of mid-thirteenth-century Italian painting, demonstrating the monumental scale and spiritual intensity of Umbrian art before the Assisi frescoes.

Executed in egg tempera on gold-ground panel, the two saints are rendered in the Master's distinctive manner with large, solemn faces and broad drapery folds that suggest three-dimensional form. Each apostle holds his identifying attribute, and the paired composition creates a balanced, symmetrical arrangement typical of altarpiece wing panels.