Saint Matthias by http://www.wikidata.org/.well-known/genid/27a71701685f13706cd0d6c006f99c55

A saint stares out from a gold ground, painted in tempera on panel. This is Simone Martini's 'Saint Matthias,' dated around 1317. It was likely part of a larger altarpiece, designed to sit in candlelit churches where the real gold leaf would flicker and glow against the dark. The figure's identity is given not just by the green Gospel book in his hands but by the abbreviated Latin at the top of the panel.

Look closely at the two inscriptions framing the saint's halo. The left side reads 'SCS' and the right 'MATTHIAS.' 'SCS' is the standard medieval abbreviation for 'Sanctus,' the Latin for holy or saint. This shorthand expected a literate viewer, probably a cleric, who would read it as naturally as we read a stop sign. The name Matthias matters: he was the apostle chosen by lot to replace Judas Iscariot after the betrayal.

The artist, Simone Martini, was the great Sienese painter of his generation, a master of line and color in tempera. Tempera, made with egg yolk and pigment, dries in seconds. That forced the painter to build form stroke by stroke rather than blending. If you study the beard, you can see the individual hatch marks. The painting now lives in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a survivor of seven centuries and a window into how early Renaissance Italians made the sacred visible. What modern abbreviation would confuse a viewer in the year 2700?