In the last year of his life, St. Anthony of Padua spent the autumn of 1230 and early 1231 at the country villa of Count Tiso da Camposampiero, north-east of Padua, in a small hermit-cell the count had built for him in a walnut tree. Anthony's prayer there was already legendary.
One night, passing the hermitage, Count Tiso saw light streaming from the door, half ajar. Curious, he looked in. He saw Anthony holding in his arms a luminous Christ Child — and the Child returning his embrace. The count, terrified, stepped back; Anthony, knowing what had been seen, asked Tiso afterward not to speak of it until after his death. Tiso testified to the event in the canonical inquiry that began within months of Anthony's death (June 1231). The vision became the defining iconographic type of St. Anthony — almost every devotional image of him since the 14th century shows him holding the Christ Child.