Saint Nicholas Resuscitating Three Youths

Bicci di Lorenzo's Saint Nicholas Resuscitating Three Youths, painted around 1433, depicts the miracle in which the bishop-saint restored to life three boys who had been murdered and pickled in a barrel by a wicked innkeeper. This gruesome miracle was among the most frequently depicted Nicholas legends in medieval and Renaissance art. This work belongs to the Early Renaissance, the transformative period in European art when painters first applied mathematical perspective, naturalistic figure modeling, and archaeological interest in antiquity to the inherited traditions of medieval devotional painting. The tension between Gothic grace and Renaissance structure gives art of this period a distinctive energy.

The miracle scene is rendered with narrative directness, the three small figures emerging from the barrel while the saint makes the sign of blessing, painted in Bicci's workmanlike but effective tempera technique.