Scene with a Saint 1800 - 1900

This drawing, titled "Scene with a Saint," was made anonymously, with pen and brown ink, over traces of leadpoint. The figures stand before a building in what may be a depiction of a town square. The holy figure gestures emphatically at a book held by another robed figure. To the left, a third figure looks downward in quiet contemplation. It has been suggested that this drawing was made in fifteenth-century Florence, a place and time in which a variety of religious orders exerted considerable influence. The architecture is a kind of visual code, referencing the public spaces that were often controlled by religious institutions. It is in such spaces that social life and political power played out, and in which we might imagine the saint to have exerted her influence, either as a charitable gift-giver or as an administrator of religious law. Careful research into these specific orders and their location within Florence would tell us more about the scene unfolding here.