Artwork
Saint Justina with the Unicorn, Venerated by a Patron
Saint Justina with the Unicorn, Venerated by a Patron is an oil painting by the Mannerist artist Moretto da Brescia. It dates from 1530 and is held in the collection of the Kunsthistorisches Museum.
About this work
Overview
Executed around 1530, this oil on panel by Moretto da Brescia portrays Saint Justina of Padua alongside a donor and a unicorn. The composition is now housed in Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum, where it entered the collection in the late nineteenth century after the museum’s opening.
Subject & Meaning
The central figure, Saint Justina, is depicted in a vivid red garment trimmed with gold and a blue sash, holding a staff. At her side stands a white unicorn, its calm demeanor emphasizing the saint’s purity. A kneeling donor, dressed in dark attire, gazes upward, suggesting a devotional request for intercession.
Technique & Style
Moretto employs chiaroscuro to model forms, using contrasts of light and shadow to give the figures a three‑dimensional presence. The landscape background, with its modest trees and distant hills, recedes softly, reinforcing the intimate scale of the holy encounter.
History & Provenance
The earliest surviving mention appears in a 1662 inventory noting its transfer from the Hofburg to Ambras Castle, then part of the Holy Roman Empire’s holdings.
The painting’s original setting and patron remain unknown; no contemporary documents record its commission. The earliest surviving mention appears in a 1662 inventory noting its transfer from the Hofburg to Ambras Castle, then part of the Holy Roman Empire’s holdings. Misattributions followed, first to Titian, then to Raphael, and later to Pordenone, until the 1845 scholarship of Ransonnet correctly restored Moretto’s authorship.
Context
Created during the early sixteenth‑century Lombardic tradition, the work reflects the period’s interest in combining devotional portraiture with symbolic animal iconography. The inclusion of a unicorn, a medieval emblem of chastity, aligns with the saint’s reputation for virgin martyrdom.
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Artist & collection
Artist
Alessandro Bonvicino (also Buonvicino) (c. 1498 – possibly 22 December 1554), more commonly known as Moretto, or in Italian Il Moretto da Brescia (the Moor of Brescia), was an Italian Renaissance painter from Brescia,…
