Saint James Minor

Master of Saint Francis

National Gallery of Art

A bearded, light-skinned man is shown striding to our left and looking in that direction between two columns supporting an arch in this vertical painting. The area around the man, within the arch, is bright gold. The man has a high forehead with short, brown hair, dark eyes under dark brows, a long, straight nose, a forked beard, and his pink lips are closed. He wears a marine-blue, ankle-length cloak over a long, rose-pink robe. Folds are painted with lines of darker blue and pink. He clenches a parchment-colored scroll in his left hand, on our right, down by his hip and grasps the edge of his cloak with his other hand. His head is surrounded by a halo created by incising and punching the gold background. The shoulder-wide halo is decorated with S-shaped spirals and a ring of simple, delicate flowers around the perimeter. He stands on a dark gray floor that meets the gold background just below knee level. The columns to either side are cut off by the edges of the panel, and are brick-red with light blue, leafy capitals. The brown arch supported by the columns is inscribed, “SANCTUS JACOB LEPHI Q COGNOMINAT E IU.” The corners above are maroon red, and rough, disk-shaped areas in each corner could indicate losses.