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Saint Anthony Abbot
Fra Angelico (Guido di Pietro; Italian, c. 1395/1400–1455)
1440–41
- Medium
- Tempera on panel
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- 39.4 × 14 cm (15 1/2 × 5 1/2 in.); Framed: 70.5 × 42.6 × 7 cm (27 3/4 × 16 3/4 × 2 3/4 in.)
- Culture
- Italy
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Painting and Sculpture of Europe
- Credit line
- Bequest of Elizabeth Iglehart Blair
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
This panel painting represents Saint Anthony Abbot, a fourth-century Egyptian hermit considered the founder of Christian monasticism. It was part of a major altarpiece commissioned by Cosimo de’ Medici for the high altar of the church of San Marco in Florence, a Dominican convent where the artist himself resided after he became a friar. Before the altarpiece was dismantled by the early 19th century, the central image was a large panel representing the Virgin Mary and infant Jesus with saints; below this a horizontal predella featured episodes from the lives of the Medici family’s patron saints, Cosmas (Cosimo’s namesake) and Damian. At each side were upright registers with 10 panels depicting individual saints standing on clouds, including this painting.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
