Pizzicaiuoli altarpiece (1447-49)

The Pizzicaiuoli altarpiece was commissioned by the Sienese guild of the Pizzicaiuoli, purveyors of candles and other dry goods, for their new chapel in the church of the hospital of Santa Maria della Scala in Siena in 1447. In a series of at least ten paintings Giovanni di Paolo presented the mystical episodes in the life of Catherine (1347–80), a Sienese tertiary of the Dominican order.

The predella panels comprise a narrative cycle depicting scenes from the life of Catherine of Siena, a fourteenth-century Dominican saint, who was a minister to the poor as well as a mystic. The panels, based on a biography of Saint Catherine written in 1385 by her confessor Raymond of Capua, represent the first complete pictorial cycle of her life. This series were not part of the original commission, they may have been produced following St Catherine's canonization in 1461 and added as a predella (base) to a preexisting altarpiece.

From the narrative cycle five panels are now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, two in the Cleveland Museum of Art, one in the Detroit Institute of Arts, one in the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, and one in private collection.

The main panel of the dismantled altarpiece was identified in the eighteenth century as a Purification of the Virgin, now in the Pinacoteca Nazionale, Siena (as Presentation of Christ in the Temple). A Crucifixion (Rijksmuseum Het Catharijneconvent, Utrecht, on deposit at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam) would have constituted the centre element to the predella. Figures from the pilasters represent St Galganus, Blessed Peter of Siena(?) (both Aartsbisschoppelijk Museum, Utrecht), Blessed Andrea Gallerani, and Blessed Ambrogio Sansedoni (both Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York). The main panel would have been flanked by two large standing saints, as was traditional in Sienese altarpieces, but of these there is no record.