Story of saint Nicholas

Fra Angelico's Story of Saint Nicholas panels were predella elements of his major altarpiece for the Arte dei Linaiuoli (Linen Workers' Guild) or another significant Florentine commission. Nicholas of Myra was the bishop and wonder-worker whose legendary gifts to poor girls' dowries and miraculous saving of drowning sailors made him one of the most beloved saints of medieval Europe. Angelico treated these Nicholas narratives around 1437 with the narrative vivacity and spatial clarity that distinguish his predella work — compressed architectural stages, legible figure arrangements, and the warm storytelling manner of Masaccio absorbed into his own luminous palette.

Angelico's predella format allows multiple narrative scenes within a continuous horizontal register. The Nicholas episodes — typically the dowry gifts (Nicholas tossing gold bags through a window), the resurrected pickled children, the sailor rescue — are treated as miniature paintings complete in themselves. His characteristic architectural settings create rational space even at small scale.