Polyptych of the Four Crowned Saints, Nicostratus

The polyptych was placed in the Veronese church of San Pietro Incarnario, on the altar pertaining to the art of stone cutting, of which the four crowned saints were patrons. There are represented the crowned figures of the saints, five Pannonian sculptors and four Roman officers, united in the original passio despite the two groups having been martyred two years apart. Responding to a demand for greater adherence to ancient sources in sacred figurations – typical of the Counter-Reformation – the saints are represented here together for the first time in the modern age, after the cult by the stonecutters in the Middle Ages had led to the exclusion of the four Roman saints. In the panels the figures of the martyrs are captured in different poses and inhabit their own space with relative ease; the shadows cast by the figures and the apse cavities contribute to defining an overall spatial effect, to which the lost frame was also supposed to contribute.