St Dominic

Carlo Crivelli painted this Saint Dominic around 1487 for one of his altarpiece commissions in the Italian Marches. Dominic, founder of the Dominican order, was frequently depicted in altarpieces for Dominican churches. Crivelli's renderings of Dominican saints brought his distinctive ornamental vocabulary to the austere black-and-white Dominican habit. Carlo Crivelli was a Venetian-trained painter who spent most of his career in the Marche, the central Italian region east of the Apennines, where he executed altarpieces for churches in Ascoli Piceno, Camerino, and other provincial centers.

Tempera and gold on panel with Crivelli's sharp linear definition. The Dominican founder's ascetic features and religious habit are rendered with Crivelli's characteristic precision and decorative embellishment.