Niccolò di Pietro (active 1394-1427/30)
St. Ursula and Her Maidens

Tempera and gold on wood
Metropolitan Museum of Art

The large central figure is the Virgin Mary. The inscription on her belt is [AVE] MARIA GRATIA PL[ENA], "Hail Mary, full of grace." St. Ursula is the second-largest figure, standing left of Mary with the palm branch in her right hand. That leaves eleven smaller figures – easier to paint than eleven thousand!

Read more about St. Ursula

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• Iconography of St. Ursula
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Photographed at the Metropolitan by Richard Stracke, shared under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.