Alvise Vivarini and Marco Basaiti
Altarpiece of St. Ambrose
1503
Oil on panel, 197 x 98 in. (500 x 250 cm.)
Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, Venice
In his right hand St. Ambrose holds the scourge that is his attribute. At his right and left behind him are Saints Gervasius and Protasius, whose cult he promoted while Bishop of Milan. His status as bishop is expressed by his mitre and crozier.
On the left are three saints: John the Baptist in a green bib over his camel skin, Sebastian pierced in the midsection by an arrow, and a man with a short sword identified by the Web Gallery of Art as Louis IX, although none of that saint's attributes are in evidence.
On the right the three saints are Gregory the Great (again, as identified by the Web Gallery of Art), Augustine, and Jerome. Jerome wears a red mantle thrust casually over a very skimply tunic. Vivarini combines two iconographic traditions, one with Jerome in ragged clothing in his hermitage and the other putting him in a cardinal's robe and hat. Many subsequent 16th-century images re-use this device.
The Web Gallery suggests that the "two anonymous heads" left and right in the far background are members of the congregation in charge of the "Frari" church.
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Photographed at the church by Richard Stracke, shared under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.