Renaissance

Yet, for all their pomp, these coffin-bearers look oddly delicate. Shouldn’t an admiral’s coffin be carried by grizzled sailors or rugged soldiers? Instead, Mélida gives us smooth-faced, almost feminine figures — in fact, they are women dressed as men.

The small black wild animals are the trademark of the wilderness. Medieval imagination did not consider the Egyptian desert an uninhabited wasteland, but rather a barren yet populated place, home to various wild creatures. Among these were ravens, which, by the Lord’s command, fed Saint Anthony the Hermit and Saint Paul with bread; deer that nourished other hermits with milk; lions from whose paws merciful hermits extracted thorns, binding them in lifelong gratitude