Three events in the life of Saint Blaise: 25a Saint Blaise discovered by a deer in a cave; 25b Torture of Saint Blaise; 25c Martyrdom of Saint Blaise

This board painting, which was originally the predella of an altar-piece that probably stood on the high altar of the church of San Biagio in Vicenza, was attributed to Bartolomeo Montagna when it became part of the collection of paintings in the Civic Art Gallery. Later assigned to the Veronese artist Domenico Morone, the work is now considered part of a group of paintings produced by an artist who was active between Verona and the territory of Vicenza in the first decade of the sixteenth century and who is conventionally referred to as the “Master of the Sagramoso Library”.

It depicts some episodes from the life of Saint Blaise, bishop of Cappadocia, who – as shown in the first of the three painted scenes – lived as a hermit in the time of the Emperor Diocletian, taking refuge in a cave, surrounded by fierce animals. The animals, made docile by the calmness and goodness of the saint, used to come to the cave to be blessed by him. Blaise suffered a terrible martyrdom: he was tied to a pole and tortured with iron combs, while the blood that flowed copiously from his wounds was collected by some pious women. Diocletian sentenced him to be beheaded. As may be seen in the last of the three episodes in the painting, the saint was executed with two young men.

In the painting, the work of an artist who has already learned from the style of Andrea Mantegna, the landscape, precisely described in all the slightest details, plays a leading role, it has an “expressive, dramatic function, no longer just a decorative one” (Villa). The dynamic figures, with strongly distinctive features, swathed in elegant draperies, are rendered with a clear, sharp sign that defines the forms which are further stressed by the use of chiaroscuro, accentuated by light colours. The sober layout of the composition expresses the artist’s own way of narrating the scene, apparently naïve and fantastic.