The Dominican Blessed

This panel stood at one end of the predella of the high altarpiece at San Domenico in Fiesole, painted around 1423 to 1424, and the story of the building itself may be written into it. Two of the kneeling figures are lay members of the Dominican order rather than friars, and the National Gallery's catalogue suggests they may be sons of Barnaba degli Agli, a Florentine whose will of 1418 left money toward finishing the church. The woman at the front holding a red book is labelled Caterina, for Catherine of Siena, the mystic who had died in 1380. She was only made a saint in 1461, so here she still kneels among the blessed. Look too for a friar holding a small model of a church, and another with a red heart in his hand.