Today is the feast of St Vincent of Saragossa, a deacon martyred in the early part of Diocletian's persecution.
He is venerated as the patron of Lisbon, where there survives the St Vincent Panels, a wonderful set of paintings of the veneration of the saint by representitives of the realm of Portugal and dated to the 1460s. It is attributed to the artist Nuno Gonçalves who was working in the years 1450-71. The six panels include some sixty portraits of the leading figures in the life of the kingdom under King Duarte I and King Afonso V. In recent years there has been considerable scholarly debate about the identification of the figures in the painting and there is a good, illustrated, account here.
One of the two central panels depicting St Vincent.
He is flanked by King Duarte I and his Queen Eleanor of Aragon, with King Afonso V and his Queen Isabella of Coimbra kneeling in front with their son, the future King John II on the right.
The panels are a marvellous record of the men and women who shaped Portugal's destiny as it embarked on its great era of expansion, encouraged by Dom Henry the Navigator who appears n the panals, and also of the ruling elite of mid-fifteenth century European kingdom.
