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Plautilla Nelli, Saint Catherine, XVI century, Monastery of San Marco
A Saint Catherine for the San Marco Monastery
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Saint Catherine was a money-maker for Nelli and her sisters. Nelli’s smalls-cale works, like the San Marco Saint Catherine restored for Nelli’s 2017 monographic show at the Uffizi Galleries were in high demand during her time. In the catalog, Art and Devotion in Savonarola’s Footsteps, scholar Fausta Navarro provides insight on Nelli’s working bottega: “Most of the art produced in the convent of Santa Caterina in Cafaggio was intended to satisfy the demands of a market composed of ‘family members and clients’ within the vast network of Dominican convents in Tuscany, a demand that was so substantial as to require the use of serial production, as in the case of the five portraits of Saint Catherine of Siena/de’ Ricci. Following the convent reforms stipulated in the Tridentine decrees, which prohibited the search for charitable support outside the convent walls, the sale of these works became even more essential to the life of the convent.”