Ecstasy of Saint Margaret of Cortona

A nobleman of Cortona, Nicolo Gerolamo Venuti, paid for this in 1622 for the high altar of Santa Maria Nuova in his own town, and had his coat of arms painted into the lower left corner. It did not stay there. Ferdinando de' Medici, the Tuscan heir and a relentless collector, wanted it for the palace in Florence, bought it, and sent Cortona a new painting of the same subject by Giuseppe Maria Crespi to stand on the altar instead. That substitute is still in the town, in the diocesan museum. Margaret of Cortona had been a young woman whose lover was murdered. His dog led her to the body, and she spent the rest of her life as a Franciscan penitent. Lanfranco shows her held up by two angels as Christ appears in the cloud above with his wounds visible, and the dog is down at her feet.