Saint Helena

Giovanni Battista Cima da Conegliano, c. 1495

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Artist: Giovanni Battista Cima da Conegliano (Italian, 1459–1517)
Medium: oil on panel
Size: overall: 40.2 × 32.2 cm (15 13/16 × 12 11/16 in.); framed: 61.28 × 53.34 × 8.89 cm (24 1/8 × 21 × 3 1/2 in.)
Museum: National Gallery of Art
Rights: CC0 — no rights reserved

A pale-skinned woman stands holding a cross in front of a deep landscape in this vertical painting. The woman’s body faces us but she tips her head to our right and looks off in that direction with light brown, wide-set, large eyes. She has a long, straight nose, pale pink lips, and a square jawline. Her thick blond hair is pulled back and curls fall alongside her face and fall down to her shoulders. She wears a gold crown and gold breastplate ornamented with pearls and gems. Her lapis-blue gown is slit along the long sleeves and puffs of white linen are pulled through the openings.

A carnation-red robe drapes over one shoulder and across her hips. She is barefoot, and both hands brace the tall cross to her right, our left. A tall, spindly tree with only a few leaves in its sparce canopy stands just behind her to our right. She stands on a grassy hill, and a path leads back to a town. More grassy, tree-lined hills behind her rise to another town outlined against the pale blue sky. A few clouds trundle across the sky and more are streaked across the pink horizon, which comes about halfway up this composition.