Saint Anthony Abbot

Giovanni di Niccola da Pisa's Saint Anthony Abbot, dating to around 1350, depicts the Egyptian desert father who was one of the most widely venerated saints in Gothic Europe, invoked against ergotism (Saint Anthony's fire) and as patron of domestic animals. Giovanni was a Pisan painter working in the tradition established by the city's proximity to both Florentine and Sienese artistic centres. The panel at the National Gallery, London, reflects the widespread demand for images of popular intercessory saints in fourteenth-century Italian parish churches.

Egg tempera and gold ground on panel with the saint rendered in the stiff, frontal manner typical of mid-Trecento Pisan workshop production. The figure displays clearly legible iconographic attributes — tau-cross staff and bell — executed with careful gilding and decorative punch-work.