3-015-799 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

The Martyrdom Of Saint Catherine Of Alexandria, c1490. Three episodes from the legend of Saint Catherine of Alexandria. 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 center, she has been beheaded. This panel originally formed part of a row of small images—a predella—beneath the main sections of an altarpiece commissioned for a chapel in the church of Sant’Agostino in Siena.