The Miraculous Communion of Saint Catherine of Siena

Giovanni di Paolo's Miraculous Communion of Saint Catherine of Siena, painted around 1450 for the Metropolitan Museum, depicts the Sienese mystic receiving communion directly from Christ. Giovanni di Paolo was the most visionary painter of fifteenth-century Siena, known for his idiosyncratic style and inventive treatment of mystical subjects. Giovanni di Paolo was among the most individual and poetic painters of fifteenth-century Siena, developing a highly personal style that combined the mystical intensity of the Sienese tradition with a love of decorative color and spatial fantasy quite unlike anything in contemporary Florentine painting.

The panel displays Giovanni di Paolo's distinctive angular figures and vivid color, the miraculous communion scene rendered with an expressive intensity and spatial inventiveness that sets his work apart from conventional Sienese painting.