Public domain paintings of Catholic male saints.
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! According to tradition, John the Baptist wears a hair shirt under a white cloth, associated with newly baptized Christians. The flag bearing a red cross symbolizes resurrection. In marked contrast, the background features a lavish gold-patterned...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! This scene takes place entirely in the celestial sphere, with a background of defined and golden clouds. Saint Joseph appears in profile, kneeling, and of advanced age, holding a hand to his chest and a flowery...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! In his right hand, the Christ child grasps a stem of roses. The beauty and fragrance of roses symbolize heaven, while their thorny stems allude to the crown of thorns and Christ's suffering. The...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! Sir Thomas More (7 February 1478 – 6 July 1535), venerated in the Catholic Church as Saint Thomas More, was an English lawyer, judge, social philosopher, author, statesman, and noted Renaissance humanist. He also served Henry VIII...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! Saint Catherine (1347–1380) was the daughter of a prosperous Sienese cloth dyer. At the age of six, she saw a vision of Christ and thereafter dedicated herself to chastity, penance, and good works. She became...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! In the central panel the Glorification of the cross by the Saints, the prophets and the angels is shown. On the right, are the 4 the patriarchs including Moses, Abraham and King David. Jonas is sitting...
Please Subscribe or Donate [https://sdcason.com/donate] to Help Keep This Site Free! Saint Peter (died between AD 64 and 68), also known as Simon Peter, Simeon, Simon, or Peter the Apostle, was one of the Twelve Apostles of Jesus Christ, and one of the first leaders of the...
St. Peter Martyr, also called Peter of Verona, Italian San Pietro Martire or San Pietro da Verona, (born 1205?, Verona [Italy]—died April 6, 1252, near Milan; canonized 1253; feast day April 29), inquisitor, vigorous preacher, and religious founder who, for his militant reformation, was assassinated by a neo-Manichaean sect,...
A devout woman, shown at lower right, is presented by saints and an angel to the central Virgin and Child. In clockwise order from her is Saint Lucy, identified by the cauldron and sword at her feet; Saint Agnes, by the lamb; Saint Scholastica, by the dove she holds; and...
Jerome and Catherine sit on a grass-covered bench before some rose bushes. The two saints can be identified by their attributes: Jerome with the lion, and Catherine with the sword and the broken wheel. Catherine was the daughter of a king and served as a role model for wealthy courtly...
This image, which has always been a popular motif in Christian art, shows the Virgin Mary with the infant Jesus, John the Baptist on the left, and Saint Francis of Assisi on the right. The Virgin wears a bright red dress—likely representing the Holy Spirit or presence of God....
Once part of an altarpiece, this side wing and its companion were commissioned in 1408 by the confraternity of the Virgin and Saint Stephen for the church of Santo Stefano in Pane on the outskirts of Florence. The central panel featured a Coronation of the Virgin that is now in...
In the upper half of this oil study, Christ is depicted in glory surrounded by adoring angels. Looking up at him are four martyr saints: Saints Celsus, Marcionilla, Julian, and Basilissa. Pompeo Batoni made this sketch when he was only twenty-eight, in preparation for his first important commission in Rome....
This brooding, wild-looking man is identified by some scholars as Saint Onuphrius, a Christian hermit who spent sixty years alone in the Egyptian wilderness, praying and meditating. Onuphrius is commonly depicted as an elderly, almost disturbed man deep in contemplation, covered by his unkempt hair and beard, and clothed usually...
Saint Augustine is a giant in many ways. He had a powerful and forceful personality which he used both before and after his conversion. He had a passion for whatever he did, and this showed up in his theological teachings. Yet Augustine was also a man of great love, as...
The artist covered the sides and reverse of this panel with a thin layer of gesso (a type of plaster), allowing the texture of the rough wood to remain visible. He then painted it to resemble porphyry, a beautiful and valuable stone. Source [https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1924.199]...
This small devotional picture by an anonymous 17th-century Venetian artist drew his composition from Guido Reni's large St. Andrew Led to Martyrdom fresco in Rome's Church of San Gregorio al Celio. The CMA painting portrays the central image of Reni's 1608 fresco by Reni....
Not all subjects are easy to identify. This museum long thought that the subject was the Greek philosopher Heraclitus, largely because tears are part of the standard representation of this ancient thinker. However, ter Brugghen omits the other crucial key to identifying Heraclitus--a globe over which he weeps. Instead, the...
Bernat Martorell was the greatest painter of the first half of the fifteenth century in Catalonia in northeastern Spain. Depicted here is the most frequently represented episode from the popular legend of Saint George, in which the model Christian knight saves a town and rescues a beautiful princess. Conceived in...
Saint Paul and Saint Sirus are panel paintings likely from the same large altarpiece. Panel painting was a lengthy process that required many steps. The panel is a plank of wood that was prepared with many layers of gesso, a glue-size-chalk substance that forms the white base layer of the...
Boucher painted this picture for his patron, Madame de Pompadour, the mistress of Louis XV. Partly to please the religious faction at court, she commissioned devotional pictures for the chapels in her various residences. She ordered this one of Saint John, her patron saint, for a chapel in the Capuchin...
These panels depicting Saints Anthony the Abbot and Michael originally flanked a central scene of the Madonna and Child with Angels, now lost, to form a triptych. Giovanni di Cosimo de’Medici of Florence commissioned the ensemble in 1457 as a gift to Alfonso V of Aragon. Fra Filippo Lippi,...
Sebastian, a bodyguard for the Roman emperor Diocletian, was shot with arrows and was eventually drowned for his commitment to Christianity. While the arrow alludes to Saint Sebastian, the young man’s clothing dates to the late 1400s, indicating that this is a contemporary portrait, rather than an image of...
Salome’s dancing so pleased her stepfather Herod that he offered her anything she wanted. Her mother advised Salome to demand John the Baptist’s head, which Salome presented to her family in an elaborate dish. Here, the head stands on its own, with a startlingly tangible presence. Despite its...
