The Martyrdom of St. Agatha in an initial DThe Metropolitan
describes the work as follows:
This miniature was originally included in an antiphonary volume
illuminated by Sano di Pietro for the Hospital of Santa Maria della
Scala in Siena. The scene inside the initial D illustrates one of the
responses for the Feast of Saint Agatha (February 5): "Dum torqueretur
beata Agatha in mamilla graviter dixit ad iudicem impie crudelis et
dire tyranne" (While blessed Agatha was being cruelly tortured in her
breasts, she said to the judge: godless, cruel, infamous tyrant). The Hospital choirbooks, written and decorated between 1456 and
1476/77, represent one of the largest and most prestigious manuscript
commissions in fifteenth-century Siena. Sano di Pietro, who by the
mid-fifteenth century was one of the principal painters and
illuminators in Siena, was entrusted with the decoration of at least
five of the twenty volumes in the series. The Lehman Saint Agatha
is one of many initials and full leaves painted by his hand that were
removed from these books and sold to collectors sometime during the
nineteenth century, before transfer of the choirbooks to the Museo
dell'Opera del Duomo.
More of Saint Agatha