Donna Perna Being Cured on Approaching St Bernardino's Body

This painting - together with two other panels - belonged to a predella depicting posthumous miracles associated with St Bernardino. The event depicted in this panel took place on 22 May 1450, a week after Saint Bernardino’s canonization by order of Pope Nicholas V. It shows the paralytic donna Perna, wife of the Aquilean Matteo Petrucci, being cured after approaching the corpse of Saint Bernardino: his body was removed from its coffin by the people of Aquila and displayed in the church for veneration almost exactly six years after the saint’s death in the Franciscan convent of Aquila on 20 May 1444.