St. Galganus

This Saint Galganus from 1448 depicts Galgano Guidotti, the twelfth-century Sienese knight who renounced worldly life and became a hermit, famously thrusting his sword into a rock as a gesture of peace. San Galgano was one of Siena's most revered local saints, and his cult was closely tied to Sienese civic identity. 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 depicted with his characteristic attribute of the sword embedded in rock, rendered in Giovanni di Paolo's distinctive linear style with vivid color against gold ground.