14th Italian Marble High Relief From Montagnola Senese

Marble high relief from Montagnola Senese depicting a half-length female profile, Siena, 14th century.

The high relief, in the Sienese tradition of the 14th century, is characterized by its depth and its ability to represent figures and scenes in three dimensions; it is characterized by a Gothic-Romanesque style, with slender figures, decorated clothes and a strong use of symbolism.
Our high relief depicts a woman in half-length, three-quarter view: on her head you can still see a crown as well as the typical clothes of noblewomen. It could have been a Saint Catherine of Alexandria. Traces of polychromy are still visible on the clothes. It was certainly part of a set of panels that were then dismembered: the edges were finished in a later period. The material belongs to that group of “coloured marbles” that were quarried in the area called “Montagnola Senese”, a limestone massif a few kilometres from the city: it is the white-grey shade, used in the parish churches of Montagnola Senese (11th century) and then in the city of Siena itself (from the 14th century) both as building stone and in works of art, subsequently replaced by Apuan marbles because they are more resistant to atmospheric agents.

Measure H cm 22 W cm 14,5 D cm 5