The typological similarity between these paintings, in which
the saints are rather unusually presented sitting on a bench
next to a wall lined with green brocade with a similar pattern,
leads one to believe that they belonged together to the same
series, which might have been either an altarpiece or a succession
of panels placed above the choir stalls. The austere model
of the figures and the stiff and profoundly marked folds of their
garments are the main features linking them to the workshop
of Nuno Gonçalves. The crucifix exhibited by the Franciscan
Saint seems to derive directly from the famous Calvary painted
by Rogier van der Weyden, around 1460, for the Carthusian
monastery of Scheut, close to Brussels, which sheds some light
on the influences affecting the work of Nuno Gonçalves and on
the scarcely known about his artistic training.
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