The Crippled and Sick Cured at the Tomb of Saint Nicholas

Gentile da Fabriano

National Gallery of Art

A dozen men and women approach or gather around a stone tomb in a church in this square painting. The people all have pale skin and wear robes in muted blue, sage green, apricot, dark pink, or vivid red. The rectangular tomb is supported on four columns, which are just taller than the people standing next to and under it. It sits in a curved apse, which is decorated with gold paintings or mosaics. In the quarter dome above, a person sits in an almond-shaped halo flanked by two people wearing royal blue and dark pink. Some of the scenes below and to the sides of the dome are hard to make out but one, to our left, shows a person wearing blue holding a baby, and another to our right is of a nearly nude person on a cross. Two people in front of the tomb raise hands to touch its bottom edge. Underneath the casket, one person supports another, who has swooned or fainted. A fifth person there peeks around the front, right column. Two women are on the six steps leading up to the tomb, and a man using a cane approaches from our right. His robes are pulled up over a red gash on his shin. At the bottom center of the picture, three men wearing knee-length tunics support each other, arms slung across each other’s shoulders. Another man carrying a crutch across one shoulder walks away from the tomb, to our left of this trio. Rows of tan stone columns topped by leafy capitals supporting vaulted arches comes toward us to either side of the tomb. One more person wearing monk’s robes is visible through the columns, near the right edge of the painting. The floor at the foot of the steps is petal pink.