Piero di Cosimo

  • The Visitation

  • The Visitation with Saint Nicholas
    and Saint Anthony Abbot

  • (c. 1490), oil on wood panel
  • 72.5 x 74.25 in. (184 x 188 cm.)
  • National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.
  • 700 x 651 (82 Kb)

Editor’s Note:

“The Visitation with Saint Nicholas and Saint Anthony Abbot” was originally an altarpiece painted for the Capponi family chapel in the church of Santo Spirito in Florence. The central scene of the “Visitation” depicts the meeting of the cousins Mary and Elizabeth, the first pregnant with Jesus and the second bearing John the Baptist. The Saints sit in the foreground as studious witnesses to the event.

Saint Nicholas on the left, is identified by his attribute of three gold balls alluding to his charity towards the daughters of an impoverished nobleman, and Saint Anthony Abbot on the right, identified by his ‘tau’ cane, bell and ever–present pig companion. A detail of the pig is shown below:

pig

Additional scenes relating to the birth of Christ are depicted in the background: the Annunciation painted on a distant church wall, the Nativity and Adoration of the Shepherds on the left, and the Massacre of the Innocents is in the middle ground.