. Legends of the monastic orders : as represented in the fine arts. mind andcharacter. Equally, however, in importance and interest, isthe authentic effigy of his sainted friend and patroness which ST. CATHERINE OF SIENA. Vanni has left us. This portrait was painted originally onthe wall of the Church of San Domenico, in that part of thenave which was the scene of Catherines devotions and mystic visions, and which has since been divided off and en-closed as a place of peculiarsanctity. The fresco, nowover a small altar, has longbeen covered with glass andcarefully preserved, and isin all respe
. Legends of the monastic orders : as represented in the fine arts. mind andcharacter. Equally, however, in importance and interest, isthe authentic effigy of his sainted friend and patroness which ST. CATHERINE OF SIENA. Vanni has left us. This portrait was painted originally onthe wall of the Church of San Domenico, in that part of thenave which was the scene of Catherines devotions and mystic visions, and which has since been divided off and en-closed as a place of peculiarsanctity. The fresco, nowover a small altar, has longbeen covered with glass andcarefully preserved, and isin all respects most strik-ing and lifelike. I give asketch from it, in which thegeneral character of thehead is tolerably preserved ;but it would be difficult totransfer, even to a finishedcopy, its peculiar is a spare, worn, butelegant face, with small re-gular features. Her blackmantle is drawn round her;she holds her spotless lilyin one hand, the other ispresented to a kneeling nun,who seems about to press itreverentially to her lips;this figure has been called. St. Catherine of Siena. a votary, but I think it may represent the repentance andpardon of her enemy Palmerina. In the single devotional figures, so commonly met with inthe Dominican churches, St. Catherine is distinguished bythe habit of the Order and the stigmata; these together fixthe identity at once. It is true that one of the earliest of herbiographers, the good St. Antonino of Florence, who wasborn seven or eight years after her death, asserts distinctlythat the stigmata were not impressed visibly on her body, but 302 LEGENDS OP THE MONASTIC ORDERS. on her soul: and about a century later, the Franciscanspetitioned Pope Sixtus IV. that Catherine of Siena mightnot be represented in a manner which placed her on anequality with their own great saint and patriarch. Sixtus,who before his elevation had been a Franciscan friar, issueda decree, that in the effigies of St. Catherine the stigmatashould thenceforth be omit
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