Saint Nicholas Providing Dowries

In the top scene, Saint Nicholas, Bishop of Myra (270–343)—the original "Saint Nick"—is shown throwing three balls of gold through a window, providing the dowry of three poverty-stricken maidens. In the other painting he resuscitates three youths who had been pickled by an innkeeper during a famine (a story treated by Benjamin Britten in his 1948 cantata, Saint Nicholas).The panels formed the base (predella) of an altarpiece painted between 1433 and 1435 for a monastery in Florence. Their design was based on an altarpiece by Gentile da Fabriano of 1425.