Public domain paintings of Catholic male saints.
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...
Saint Nicolas of Bari, patron saint of children, sailors, and travelers, and the prototype of Father Christmas, was bishop of Myra (Lycia) in Asia Minor during the AD 300s. His remains were said to have been taken to Bari in Italy during the 11th century. The saint is shown vested...
Augustine of Hippo, also known as Saint Augustine, was a theologian, philosopher, and the bishop of Hippo Regius in Numidia, Roman North Africa. Wikipedia [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustine_of_Hippo] Saint Monica was an early African Christian saint and the mother of St. Augustine of Hippo. She is...
A Madonna is a representation of Mary, either alone or with her child Jesus. These images are central icons for both the Catholic and Orthodox churches. The word is from Italian ma donna 'my lady'. Wikipedia [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madonna_(art)#:~:text=A%20Madonna%20(Italian%...
Saint Roch, born of noble French parents in the late 1200s, was the patron saint of the plague-stricken. Before he was twenty years of age, he disposed of his riches and henceforth devoted himself to nursing the sick. Saint Roch is frequently depicted with cockleshell, wallet, and staff in the...
A donor portrait or votive portrait is a portrait in a larger painting or other work showing the person who commissioned and paid for the image, or a member of his, or (much more rarely) her, family. Donor portrait usually refers to the portrait or portraits of donors alone, as...
Saint Jerome (about ad 347–420) translated biblical texts into Latin. Although he sometimes appears as a scholar in his study, Ribera represents him here as a penitent who withdrew to the desert, beating his chest with a stone to emulate Christ’s suffering and contemplating a skull symbolizing human...
During Jesus’s arrest on the night of the Last Supper, the apostle Peter denied knowing him. Although Christ forgave his betrayal, Peter was consumed by guilt. La Tour represents Peter as an old man, reflecting on his past actions in a state of perpetual repentance. The apostle’s red-rimmed...
In 1754, King Louis XV of France sent the comte de Stainville (later duc de Choiseul) to Rome to secure a decision from Pope Benedict XIV about disputes concerning the authority of the French courts, the Roman Catholic Church, and the Jansenists, a Catholic sect. The result was an encyclical,...
The perfectly round form, called a tondo, became popular during the 1440s. Made for domestic settings instead of churches, the circular format challenged the artist to create a harmonious, balanced composition within this more difficult shape. The attribution has been a matter of debate. Botticelli often collaborated with students, including...
