Saint Justina with the Unicorn, Venerated by a Patron

Painted around 1530 by Moretto da Brescia, this oil on panel shows Saint Justina of Padua, identifiable by the palm of martyrdom she holds, together with a unicorn, an animal often linked in Christian tradition to purity. A donor also appears in the scene, though who commissioned the picture and where it originally hung remain unknown. Its documentary past is unusually eventful. In 1662 it was recorded as a work by Titian, earlier inventories had given it to Raphael, and an inventory of 1733 assigned it to Pordenone. It was Ransonnet, in 1845, who returned it to Moretto. It now hangs in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, which acquired it in the late nineteenth century, shortly after the museum opened. The case shows how attributions can shift over time, and how a Brescian painter's work could be mistaken for that of famous Venetian and Roman masters.

Painter

Moretto da Brescia

Date

1530

Medium

oil paint, panel

Dimensions

200 × 139 cm

Museum

Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Genre

religious art

Depicts

donor, Justina of Padua, martyr's palm, unicorn

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