LORENZO DI NICCOLÒ DI MARTINO
(active 1392-1412)

Reliquary with scenes from the legend of St Fina

c. 1402
Wood
Museo d'Arte Sacra, San Gimignano

In 1402 the city fathers of San Gimignano commissioned from the Florentine painter Lorenzo di Niccolò di Martino a wooden shrine to receive the head of the young local saint St Fina. On the walls of this reliquary the girl's life and the miracles attributed to her after her death are recounted in eight scenes. Fina is here shown with a saint's halo and carrying a model of San Gimignano on her arm, indicating that at that time she was already venerated as one of the city's patron saints. The episodes from the life of the saint painted on the outside of the reliquary are based on a narrative written by Fra Giovanni del Coppo as early as roughly 1310. On the front of the reliquary Pope Gregory the Great is represented beside St Fina.




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