Saint Catherine of Alexandria, with an Angel [right panel]

This painting belongs to a triptych, which also includes Madonna and Child, with the Blessing Christ [middle panel] and Saint Mary Magdalene, with an Angel [left panel]. The image represents Saint Catherine of Alexandria, who is identified by her crown and by the wheel of martyrdom she supports with her right hand. According to the _Golden Legend_, Saint Catherine had contested Emperor Maxentius's persecution of Christians and successfully rebutted the arguments of 50 philosophers and orators who had sought to ruin her faith in Christ. Having been thwarted, the emperor ordered that Catherine be executed with spiked wheels. The wheels, however, were shattered through divine intervention.

An inscription, which survives on a fragment of the original frame (now incorporated in a modern support and located beneath the triptych's central panel of Madonna and Child, with the Blessing Christ [middle panel], records the artist's signature: _Pietro Lorenzetti of Siena painted me in 1340_._ _Pietro and his brother Ambrogio are often noted for the inventive ways in which they defined three-dimensional space and incorporated details from everyday life to expand the realism of their figures and settings. However, they also painted icon-like devotional pictures, such as this one. During this period, Pietro seems to have been especially influenced by Giotto (Florentine, c. 1265 - 1337), as seen in the quiet solemnity of the composition, in which a massive figure fills nearly the entire panel. The figure’s clothing also typifies Giotto's style: heavy fabrics fall perpendicularly in a few simplified or pointed folds to emphasize the figure's solidity.