A Bishop Saint

Michele Giambono's A Bishop Saint, dated around 1436 and now in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, is a late panel by one of the most important Venetian painters of the International Gothic generation. Giambono worked in Venice throughout his career, and his work represents the persistence of the International Gothic tradition in Venice even after Gentile da Fabriano and Pisanello had shown new possibilities. Bishop saints were among the most common figures in altarpiece programs, usually identifiable through their vestments, mitre, and crozier, and often placed as flanking saints in polyptych altarpieces alongside more specifically identified figures.

Giambono renders the bishop saint against a gold ground with the decorative refinement characteristic of his Venetian International Gothic style. The episcopal vestments — dalmatic, cope, and mitre — are rendered with attention to the rich fabrics and embroidery typical of Venetian luxury objects. The face is individualized within the idealized conventions of the style.