Ashmolean The Elements of Drawing, John Ruskin’s teaching collection at Oxford

Saint Anthony Abbot sits on the ground and reads a book, a hat beside him. His staff, topped with a crucifix set against a double cross and with a bell hanging from it, is planted in the ground beside him. The city behind him combines elements of Nuremberg, Trent and Innsbruck.

Although this print was never named explicitly by Ruskin, it is identified through its presence in the collection, Ruskin's description of its frame containing 'Saints, Nuremberg in the distance', and Cook and Wedderburn's note that the frame contained works dated 1514 (the "Saint Thomas"), 1519 (this one) and 1523 (the "Saint Bartholomew") (XXI.81, n. 4). The frame of Dürer saints was first catalogued by Ruskin in the first Educational Series catalogue of 1871, where, as no. 33 B, it accompanied other Dürers and Holbeins in Case III, "Illustrations of Northern Gothic, with its resultant Art". In the second Educational catalogue, of 1874, it occupied the same position - although renumbered as 75 - but many of the Dürers had been replaced by Burne-Jones's "Cupid and Psyche" drawings.