Saint Peter Martyr Exorcizing a Woman Possessed by a Devil

Antonio Vivarini · c. 1450

Medium

Tempera on panel

Original size

54.8 × 35.5 cm (21 9/16 × 14 in.); Framed: 61.6 × 41.3 cm (24 1/4 × 16 1/4 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Italian Renaissance

This fifteenth-century panel captures a moment of spiritual drama with the stillness and gravity that defines early Venetian devotional painting — a kneeling woman, a commanding saint, and the unseen force between them made visible through gesture and expression. Antonio Vivarini was among the leading painters of Venice in the mid-1400s, working in a style that bridges the ornate International Gothic tradition with the quieter naturalism beginning to emerge across northern Italy. Trained in a workshop environment and frequently collaborating with his brother-in-law Giovanni d'Alemagna, Vivarini brought a distinctive richness to his tempera panels — layered pigments over gesso, gilded detail work, and drapery rendered with careful, almost sculptural attention. His figures carry weight without losing their iconic quality, grounded in the material world yet oriented entirely toward the sacred. Saint Peter Martyr, the Dominican friar canonized just a year after his assassination in 1252, was one of the most venerated figures in late medieval Italy, and scenes of his miraculous acts appeared across altarpieces and devotional panels throughout the period. The hand-painted oil reproduction translates the warmth of Vivarini's original palette and the intimacy of its small-scale format into a medium that rewards close looking, keeping the devotional gravity of the source fully intact.