Beata Umiltà Altarpiece

Umiltà of Faenza died in 1310, an old woman who had founded a convent in Florence and ruled it as abbess. About 30 years later Pietro Lorenzetti painted this tall panel for that same church, San Giovanni Evangelista, to stand over her tomb, for nuns who still remembered her.

It follows an old format that was already going out of use, the hagiographic icon. The saint stands full length down the centre on a gold ground, and around her run 11 small scenes of her life and her miracles, 14 painted panels in all above the predella. You read it the way you would read a life, episode by episode, from the woman leaving the world to the wonders reported after her death.

Look at how she is dressed. She wears the habit of her order and holds a book and a palm leaf, the palm a sign of glory, and over her head lies a piece of sheepskin. That sheepskin is her personal emblem, the mark of humility that gave her name, and it is how you know her in any picture.

The work has just come through a restoration that took four years.