St. Andrew Exorcising Devils
Niccolò di Pietro GERINI
(Italian, active 1368-1415)
St. Andrew Exorcising Devils
Dateca. 1395-1400
Mediumtempera on panel
Dimensionsoverall: 8 3/4 x 16 1/2 in. (22.2 x 41.9 cm)
frame: 16 1/2 x 23 in. (41.9 x 58.4 cm)
ClassificationPAINTINGS
Credit LineSBMA, Gift of Mrs. Wolcott Tuckerman
Object number1966.66
Subject(s)
- religion
- Christianity
Collection
- Old Master
Sub-Collection(s)
- Southern European, Italian
On View
Not on viewLabel TextGerini was one of the more talented members of the generation of Florentine painters that emerged after the Black Death, the plague that ravaged the city and Europe in the mid-fourteenth century. Employing a style based on that of the famous painter Lorenzo Monaco, he was responsible for important commissions in Florence as well as in the nearby Tuscan towns of Pisa and Prato. The present work was once part of the lower register – or predella – of an altarpiece, which probably featured a large central painting of the Virgin and Child surrounded by Andrew and other saints. The panel illustrates an obscure, apocryphal episode in the life of St. Andrew, recounted in the Golden Legend, a collection of hagiographies compiled by Jacobus de Voragine in the later thirteenth century. Rarely represented in art, the scene shows Andrew exorcizing demons in the city of Nicea in Turkey. Seven devils had been killing passersby as they entered the town’s gates. Standing courageously amidst the bodies of their victims, the saint commands the demons to come forward and they appear in the form of winged dogs, apparently rising from tombs in which they had been hiding. Andrew’s moral authority is conveyed by the gravity of his gesture and by his resemblance to his powerful brother, the apostle Peter.