Saint Catherine of Siena

Spagna, Lo · 1510–15

Medium

Tempera and oil on panel

Original size

107.8 × 50.3 cm (42 1/2 × 19 3/4 in.); Framed: 118.2 × 61.6 × 10.2 cm (46 1/2 × 24 1/4 × 4 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Italian Renaissance

This tender devotional panel captures Saint Catherine of Siena with the serene, otherworldly composure that made Lo Spagna one of the most sought-after painters in central Italy during the early sixteenth century. Giovanni di Pietro, known as Lo Spagna — "the Spaniard" — settled in Umbria where he trained under Pietro Perugino alongside the young Raphael. His work inherits the Umbrian school's signature qualities: soft, luminous flesh tones, graceful drapery folds rendered with architectural precision, and a quiet spiritual intensity that avoids sentimentality. In this panel, the combined use of tempera and oil gives the saint's robes a depth and richness that purely tempera-based works rarely achieve. Lo Spagna was so closely associated with Perugino's style that Vasari initially misattributed several of his works, and scholars spent centuries untangling the two hands — a testament to how completely he absorbed and then refined his master's approach. Now held in the Art Institute of Chicago, the original is a small panel likely intended for private devotion. Our hand-painted oil reproduction works at the same intimate scale of feeling, replicating the layered brushwork, the delicate gold detailing, and the luminous palette that have made this image an enduring example of Renaissance devotional painting at its most refined.