The Vision of Saint Helena

An attribute the size of a building

Helena is identified by a cross — not a small one worn or held, but the True Cross of the legend in which she is said to have found it. Her attribute is therefore an object of architectural scale, and painting solves the problem in two ways: either she stands beside a full-height cross, or the cross arrives in a vision, which is the solution this title names. A vision is a licence to show a large thing at a distance and still call it an attribute. 2 titles in this collection name Helena, and both are by the same artist — one a dream, this one a vision.

What the record holds

The catalogue dates the work to 1580 and gives the Vatican Museums as its location. The dimensions are 108 x 80 cm, an upright of moderate size. It is filed under female portraiture, Fantasy, mythological cultural heritage and Religion, with Mannerism Late Renaissance as the style and Italian as the nationality; the measured colour family is red.

Why Fantasy is filed against it

The category is doing plain work. A vision requires something to be present that is not physically in the room, and a subject index that records what a picture contains has to file such a thing somewhere. 90 entries in this collection carry the tag, and in almost all of them it marks the same situation: an image that includes a figure or an object the natural world does not supply.