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Saint Nicholas Resuscitating Three Youths

1433–35
Not on view
In the top scene, Saint Nicholas, Bishop of Myra (270–343)—the original "Saint Nick"—is shown throwing three balls of gold through a window, providing the dowry of three poverty-stricken maidens. In the other painting he resuscitates three youths who had been pickled by an innkeeper during a famine (a story treated by Benjamin Britten in his 1948 cantata, Saint Nicholas).

The panels formed the base (predella) of an altarpiece painted between 1433 and 1435 for a monastery in Florence. Their design was based on an altarpiece by Gentile da Fabriano of 1425.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: Saint Nicholas Resuscitating Three Youths
  • Artist: Bicci di Lorenzo (Italian, Florence 1373–1452 Florence)
  • Date: 1433–35
  • Medium: Tempera and gold on wood
  • Dimensions: 12 x 22 1/4 in. (30.5 x 56.5 cm)
  • Classification: Paintings
  • Credit Line: Gift of Francis Kleinberger, 1916
  • Object Number: 16.121
  • Curatorial Department: European Paintings

More Artwork

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Saints John the Baptist and an Evangelist (Matthew?)
Bicci di Lorenzo (Italian, Florence 1373–1452 Florence)
1433–35
Saint Nicholas Providing Dowries
Bicci di Lorenzo (Italian, Florence 1373–1452 Florence)
1433–35
Lobster-Tail Burgonet, Steel, leather, gold, North Italian
Lobster-Tail Burgonet
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ca. 1610
Paradise, Giovanni di Paolo (Giovanni di Paolo di Grazia) Italian, Tempera and gold on canvas, transferred from wood
Paradise
Giovanni di Paolo (Giovanni di Paolo di Grazia)
1445
Sallet in the Shape of a Lion's Head, Steel, copper, gold, glass, pigment, textile, Italian
Sallet in the Shape of a Lion's Head
Italian
ca. 1475–80

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