Neroccio de' Landi, Predella with Episodes from the Life of St. Benedict
1475
Panel, 11 x 76 in. (28 x 193 cm.)
Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy
Each of the three panels in the predella pictures an episode in the Golden Legend' life of St. Benedict. In the first, Benedict
…came into a hermitage where he was never known of no man but of a monk named Romain, which ministered to him meat food for to eat. And because that there was no way from the monastery of Romain unto the pit where St. Benet was, he knit tied the loaf in a cord and so let it down to him.
The painting gives all the details of the legend. Romain lies atop the little hill containing Benedict's cell and lowers a tied-up. His monastery is in the left background.
In the center image, Benedict's old nurse. The artist also adds a demon with red wings flying toward the saint. This is a lead-in to another episode in which the devil tempts Benedict.
The middle panel illustrates the story of the broken sifter. When Benedict was a boy, his nurse
…borrowed a vessel for to purge or winnow wheat; but the vessel fell to the earth for negligence, and was broken in two pieces. And when St. Benet saw his nurse weep he had great pity, and made his prayers to Almighty God, and after made it also whole as it had been tofore, then they of the country took it and hung it on the front of the church in witness of one so fair a miracle.
On the far right young Benedict sees his nurse's anguish over breaking the borrowed sifter. Just to the left, he is kneels in prayer before the sifter, which is now whole. In the center, the sifter hangs from the entrance to the church while "they of the country" look on.
The panel on the right illustrates the episode of Attila's deception.
Attila, the king of Goths, would once prove if St. Benet had the spirit of prophecy, and sent to him his servant, and did do array him with precious robes, and delivered to him a great company as he had been the king himself. When St. Benet saw him come, he said to him: Fair son, do off that thou wearest, it is not thine, and the man fell down anon to the ground because he mocked the holy man, and died anon.
In the image, the impostor has come in "precious robes" with "a great company." Having been found out, he kneels on the ground.
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Photographed at the Uffizi by Richard Stracke, shared under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.