Saint Anthony of Padua and the Miracle of the Miser's Heart

Antonio Lombardo

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The drawing depicts Saint Anthony of Padua performing a miracle, likely that of the miser’s heart. Preaching on the sin of greed, Saint Anthony, here seen at the near left, tells his listeners that a man’s heart ends up with his treasures. To prove his point, he opens the body of a recently deceased miser to reveal that it is empty: as Anthony predicted, the man’s heart is discovered in his money chest alongside his gold. In June 1501, the Venetian brothers Antonio and Tullio Lombardo were commissioned to carve two marble reliefs for the Chapel of Sant’Antonio in Padua, based on the approval of a drawing to be submitted by the artists. Antonio never completed his relief, on the subject of the miser’s heart, though it was much later executed, with several variations, by Tullio. This recently acquired drawing appears to be the only record of Antonio’s original idea for the composition and is one of two extant drawings that can be attributed to him.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.

Metropolitan Museum of Art