Saint Catherine of Siena

Saint Catherine of Siena from 1462 by Giovanni di Paolo at the Harvard Art Museums depicts the Dominican mystic who was canonized in 1461, just one year before this painting was made. As Siena's patron saint, Catherine was a subject Giovanni di Paolo painted repeatedly with particular devotional intensity. Characteristic of the artist's mature approach, the work displays brilliant, jewel-like color, gold grounds, lyrical figure types of Gothic grace, perspectival experiments that create strange compressed spaces, intense narrative invention.

The saint is rendered with Giovanni di Paolo's characteristic angular drawing and intense coloring, the devotional image reflecting the recently canonized saint's spiritual authority.