Saint Catherine of Alexandria

Rossello di Jacopo Franchi's Saint Catherine of Alexandria at Yale University Art Gallery, painted around 1410, depicts the learned virgin martyr who was patron of scholars and philosophers. Rossello was a Florentine painter who maintained the decorative traditions of the late Trecento Altarpieces featuring rows of standing saints served both liturgical and devotional functions, identifying the church's patron saints and giving worshippers specific objects for personal prayer.

The saint is rendered with her traditional attributes of the wheel and book, painted in the refined tempera technique with gold ground and decorative patterning characteristic of early Quattrocento Florentine devotional panels.