NICHOLAS OF MYRA, Saint – St Nicholas with boys and girls. Painting by Andrea Sabatini known as Andrea da Salerno (16th c.) – Naples, Pinacoteca.
NICHOLAS OF MYRA, Saint. – The figure of St Nicholas, bishop of Myra in Lycia, is one of the most popular in Christian hagiography. His feast is celebrated on 6 December, and his translation is commemorated on 9 May. The *Roman Martyrology* records both dates. From the earliest centuries he has been the object of a lively and widespread devotion, which has given rise to a rich iconography.
The East has preserved numerous representations of the Saint, often in the form of talismans or icons in church iconostases. An entire cycle of frescoes illustrating his legend, executed in 1560, is found in a chapel on Mount Athos, in conformity with the precepts of the *Erminia della pittura*. Among the most notable representations in painting are the altarpiece by Bernardo Daddi in the Uffizi, a sculpture in the style of Jacopo della Quercia in Siena Cathedral, and another in the chapel of the Saint in Siest. Countless German wooden sculptures depict the Saint with the attribute of three golden balls on a book.
Scenes from his legend were frescoed as early as the 13th century in the Sancta Sanctorum chapel in Rome and in St Cunibert’s in Cologne, or were included in a Flemish altarpiece in the Dublin Museum. At St Paul’s in Carinthia a Romanesque pulpit with 29 carved scenes is preserved; in the great cathedrals entire stained-glass windows are dedicated to his story, as at Bourges, Civray, Chartres, Tours, Le Mans in France and at Freiburg. Even in modern fresco cycles his story is widely employed. Five scenes are represented at Cologne in St Maria del Giglio, others in the chapel of the Sacrament in Santa Croce in Florence and in the Lower Basilica of Assisi. Also noteworthy are the 14th-century frescoes in the greater cloister of Zurich, those in a chapel near Bonaduz, and above all the narrative cycle of twelve scenes painted by an anonymous master in the chapel formerly dedicated to the Saint in the cloister of Constance. Altarpieces reproducing his image are extremely numerous, while individual episodes appear in predellas or side panels. Italian art possesses masterpieces in this field, such as the four panels by Ambrogio Lorenzetti in the Accademia in Florence, dated 1332, and three panels in the Buonarroti Gallery from the early 15th century; there are also various predellas, such as one by pupils of Masaccio in the Berlin Museum. St Nicholas delivering three knights appears in a panel by Mariotto di Nardo (15th c.) in the Vatican Pinacoteca, where he is also found with St Paul in a panel by Niccolò Buonaccorsi and with other saints in another by the Sienese Paolo di Giovanni. Gentile da Fabriano painted a polyptych for the Quaratesi chapel in San Niccolò in Florence, part of which is in the Uffizi in the same city, the central panel in the Buckingham Palace in London, and four predella paintings with scenes of the birth and three miracles of the Saint in the Vatican Pinacoteca. Fra Angelico repeated the theme several times, and among his works is particularly notable an altarpiece for the chapel of St Nicholas in San Domenico in Perugia, now in the Pinacoteca of that city, whose predella with episodes from the Saint’s life is preserved in the Vatican Pinacoteca. Other examples may also be found in German-speaking countries, e.g. in St Nicolai in Rostock and in St Mary’s in Danzig. Representations in marble and wood relief of the various events in the Saint’s life are scarcer: of Romanesque date are two baptismal fonts at Zedelghem (in Holland) and at Winchester (in England), an archiepiscopal chair at Troyes, and tympanums and portals at Colmar, Chartres, etc. – See pl. CXVII.