Three gold balls, and a bishop's hat

Nicholas is identified by three golden balls or purses, from the legend of a dowry given in secret, and by the mitre and crozier of a bishop. The balls are among the most efficient attributes in the system: an abstract shape, repeated three times, with no other saint claiming it. The subject named here is a consecration, which is the moment the second half of that kit is conferred. It is an attribute picture in the strictest sense — the scene is the issuing of the sign. 3 titles in this collection name Nicholas, and 1 of those 3 is a place rather than a person.

What the record holds

The catalogue dates the canvas to 1562 and gives the National Gallery in London as its location. The dimensions are 286.5 x 175.3 cm — very tall, the format of a painting made to sit above an altar. It is filed under Religion, Fantasy, and religious and mythological cultural heritage, with Mannerism Late Renaissance as the style and Italian as the nationality; the measured colour family is brown.

What the proportions imply

A canvas taller than it is wide by that margin is built for a viewer standing below it. The record does not say what it was made for and this page does not claim it. What the measurement does establish is the direction of the composition: whatever happens in it happens up a vertical axis, and an attribute in such a picture has to be placed where a raised eye will find it.