Saint Luke

Giorgio Vasari

National Gallery of Art

A pale-skinned man sitting hunched over as he draws on a tablet and a bull lying at his feet fill this vertical painting. The man faces our right in profile, and he looks down at the book. He has a lined forehead, a bumped nose, and wrinkles around his nose. He has lanky, chin-length hair and a curly, unruly beard. He sits with one leg pulled up so he can partially brace the tablet on that knee. He holds the inkwell and clutches the top of the tablet with one hand and draws using a feather quill with the other. His other leg stretches down, and the ball of the bare foot is perched against the edge of the low platform on which the man sits. His garment has a white collar over a tunic that shimmers from plum purple to moss green. Extending from under the tunic’s short sleeves are long sky blue and pale laurel green sleeves. A golden yellow robe drapes over one shoulder and wraps around his lap. The gray bull, which is shown in about half the scale of the man, sits with one front leg tucked under his body as he looks over to our right. The floor is pale mauve purple, and the background is dark green, almost black. A glimpse of a work of art showing a woman holding a baby is visible near the top left corner of the painting.