Bring your favorites together in your free personal gallery.
Your gallerySt. Catherine of Siena and the Beggar
Look first
- What catches your attention?
- Where does your eye go next?
- What would you ask about this work?
Show me
Read the panel from right to left: first the gift at the doorway, then Catherine kneeling as Christ, ringed by angels, returns the cloak.
The companion panel tells its story in two moments. At the right, Catherine gives her cloak to a ragged beggar at the door; at the left, the beggar, revealed as Christ, hands it back to her from a blaze of golden light. The Cleveland Museum of Art adds that the cloak protected her from the cold ever after.
tempera and gold on wood · Framed: 35.6 x 35.7 x 4.5 cm · Cleveland Museum of Art · Late Gothic and Early Renaissance
Look again
What do you notice now?
Try a quick sketch
Take a minute to sketch on any paper. No upload needed.
What did you draw first? What did you leave out?
Details and source
- Museum title
- St. Catherine of Siena and the Beggar
- Artist
- Giovanni di Paolo (Italian, c. 1403–1482)
- Date
- 1460s
- Medium
- tempera and gold on wood
- Dimensions
- Framed: 35.6 x 35.7 x 4.5 cm (14 x 14 1/16 x 1 3/4 in.); Unframed: 28.7 x 28.9 cm (11 5/16 x 11 3/8 in.)
- Credit line
- Gift of the John Huntington Art and Polytechnic Trust
- Image license
- CC0 1.0 · Public domain
- Museum record
- Cleveland Museum of Art
Artist’s life 1398–1482
View in the AtlasGaller’s rooms and hanging scale are imagined. The image is the museum’s original digital reproduction.