Saint Lucy and Her Mother at the Shrine of Saint Agatha; Saint Lucy Giving Alms; Saint Lucy before Paschasius; Saint Lucy Resisting Efforts to Move Her

Giovanni di Bartolomeo Cristiani's four scenes from the life of Saint Lucy at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, painted around 1381, depicts the Sicilian martyr's story: her visit to the shrine of Saint Agatha, her act of charity giving alms, her appearance before the magistrate Paschasius, and the miraculous failure of efforts to move her to a brothel. Cristiani worked in Pistoia during the later fourteenth century in the Giottesque tradition, producing narrative panels of considerable refinement that document the vitality of provincial Tuscan painting in the generation after the Black Death. The Lucy narrative cycle was a standard hagiographic subject, the young noblewoman's conversion, charitable works, and eventual martyrdom providing a model of female Christian virtue. The Metropolitan Museum's exceptional collection of Italian medieval and Renaissance painting is one of the finest in the world outside Italy, and this Cristiani panel provides an important document of the Pistoiese school's contribution to the Florentine Gothic tradition. The four-scene format — multiple episodes from the saint's life organized within a single panel — was a common device for narrative panels intended for altarpiece programs or confraternity devotion.

This work demonstrates Gothic painting techniques.