Male Saint

In the pictureA man with a graying beard stands before an arched niche set into a gray wall. Over a brown hooded garment he wears a dark blue-gray cloak; he holds a gray-covered book under his left arm, and his right hand hangs down. His gold halo is stamped in a ring with a pattern of small dots grouped in fours. He stands on a pink floor, and on the gray base below is a square compartment painted with pinkish marbling. A dark brown wooden frame surrounds the narrow panel. The folds of the cloak run diagonally from upper left to lower right.

BackgroundThe museum's records group this panel with Saint Bernard of Clairvaux under the same number (1975.1.70), as A and B. The two panels are the same size, 48.3 × 12.7 cm, and match down to the niche, the pink floor and the marbled compartment, so they are thought to be a pair that decorated the narrow pilasters on either side of a single altarpiece. They were made around 1447–69 in the workshop of Fra Filippo Lippi (about 1406–1469). The saint carries no identifying attribute, so who he is has not been determined. Because it is a workshop piece, it is impossible to know how much of it Lippi painted himself.

Puzzle tipThe image is very tall and narrow, so the pieces are narrow and long as well. Fit the face, the gold halo, the book and the hanging hand first, then anchor the bottom with the pink floor and the marbled compartment below it. Join the dark cloak along the light lines of its folds, and separate the gray wall from the dark inside of the niche by their left and right boundaries. The dotted pattern of the halo and the marbled compartment below mark the top and bottom, and the dark brown wooden frame is the clue for sorting out the edge pieces. 24 pieces is a good fit.