San Domenico

San Domenico (St. Dominic's Basilica) is a vast brick church in Siena. Founded by the Dominicans in 1125 as part of their friary, San Domenico is closely associated with St. Catherine of Siena and contains her head in a reliquary.

The current church of San Domenico dates from 1226. It is an enormous, severe structure jutting above a modern section of town and provides good views of the Duomo and Siena's rooftops.

The raised chapel off the west end (to the right as you enter) preserves the only genuine Portrait of St. Catherine, painted by her friend and contemporary Andrea Vanni.

The Cappella di Santa Caterina(Chapel of St. Catherine) halfway down the right wall was frescoed with scenes from the saint's life. All except the right wall (where in 1593 Francesco Vanni painted Catherine performing an exorcism) were frescoed by Sodoma in 1526.

The large work on the left wall of her interceding on behalf of a condemned man as well as the other scenes of her in ecstasy and swooning are some of Sodoma's best work. This chapel enshrines St. Catherine's incorrupt head and finger in a gilt reliquary case on the altar.

St. Catherine's main shrine is down the hill in her family home, and the rest of her body is in a tomb in Santa Maria Sopra Minerva in Rome.

At the end of the nave, on the right, is a Nativity by Francesco di Giorgio Martini dominated by a crumbling Roman triumphal arch in the background and a Pietà above.

The first chapel to the right of the altar is home to a Madonna and Child with Saints by Matteo di Giovanni, one of whose masterpieces, St. Barbara Enthroned with Angels and Sts. Mary Magdalen and Catherine, is in the second chapel of the left transept.

An altar on the right as you leave has a 14th-century Madonna and Child Surrounded by Four Saints and God by Sodoma, with a 16th-century Siena skyline above the tiny-paneled predella.