Stories of holiness

Girolamo Romanino painted these Stories of Holiness around 1520, narrative panels depicting episodes from saints' lives in the Brescian tradition of devotional narrative painting. Romanino's narrative panels combine the rich colorism and atmospheric depth of the Venetian tradition—he was deeply influenced by Titian's chromatic innovations—with the more robustly physical figure style of the Brescian school. His saint cycle paintings typically depict the miracles, visions, and martyrdoms that validated each saint's divine status, presenting the miraculous as a physical event unfolding in a recognizable natural world. The narrative format required Romanino to manage figure groups in action, using the skills he had developed in his major fresco commissions for Brescian churches.

The panel shows the warm tonal palette and atmospheric depth characteristic of Venetian-influenced painting, with the rich glazes and soft modeling typical of the north Italian tradition.