Martyrdom of St Catherine of Alexandria
by SIGNORELLI, Luca, Oil, tempera, and gold on panel, 30 x 92 cm
Three episodes from the legend of St Catherine of Alexandria appear side by side in Signorelli’s painting. On the left, a pagan emperor sits enthroned alongside his wisest philosophers, whom Catherine would skillfully convert to her Christian beliefs. On the right, angels destroy a wheel devised by the enraged emperor to torture Catherine, and in the centre, she has been beheaded.
This panel originally formed part of a predella beneath the main sections of an altarpiece commissioned for the Bichi Chapel in the church of Sant’Agostino in Siena.