Saint Mamas in Prison thrown to the Lions

This predella panel depicting Saint Mamas being thrown to the lions in prison illustrates an episode from the legendary life of a Cappadocian martyr popular in Eastern and Western devotion. As part of the 1457 altarpiece, the small-scale narrative panel allowed Lippi to exercise his considerable gifts as a storyteller within the compressed format. Characteristic of the artist's mature approach, the work displays linear grace combined with a new emotional warmth, delicate color, innovative compositional devices including the tondo format, lyrical landscape backgrounds.

The drama of the saint's miraculous survival among the lions is rendered with vivid narrative economy, Lippi's precise brushwork conveying both the threat and the divine protection in a compact pictorial space.