Saint Ursula and her Maidens

Saint Ursula was, by legend, a British princess who set out on a pilgrimage with a company of young women and was killed with them at Cologne. Here she stands sheltering her maidens under her cloak, a small devotional panel dated to around 1456. What makes it unusual is the name attached to it. It is traditionally given to Caterina Vigri, a Poor Clare nun in Bologna who also painted and was later canonised as Saint Catherine of Bologna, one of the very few women of her century credited with a picture like this. The attribution is not settled. Some scholars have doubted her hand and proposed instead the young Giovanni Bellini, working in Venice around the same years. She is known to have been drawn to this saint, having painted Ursula more than once.