ABSTRACT
The promotion of Catherine of Siena’s stigmata through their visual representation was strongly contested by the Franciscans supported, towards the end of the fifteenth century, by a pope from their own order, Sixtus IV. In response, Dominican apologists of the sixteenth and early-seventeenth centuries made arguments supporting images of Catherine with stigmata. This chapter concentrates on the Sienese Dominican Gregorio Lombardelli whose views on the tasks of art were informed by discussions about the rationale for picturing the sacred and miraculous in the period following the Council of Trent. By placing Lombardelli’s arguments within the context of post-Tridentine writings on art, this chapter contributes to scholarship on the plurality of discussions about the purposes of art during this period.
