Oratory San Caterina del Paradiso - Siena

The Oratory of Santa Caterina del Paradiso is a small church in Siena, located at Piazza Giacomo Matteotti 19, oratory of the Contrada del Drago.
Today it belongs to the Contrada del Drago, whose patron saint is Saint Catherine of Siena, after whom the oratory is named. Founded in 1479, it was for a long time the church of the nuns of Saint Catherine of Paradise, from whom the church has kept its name. The primitive temple was replaced in 1620-1626 by the present one, which is characterized by a single apsidal nave and a simple brick facade flanked by pilasters supporting the tympanum and decorated with a rectangular window and a gabled portal. In 1787, by Grand Ducal decree, the church became the oratory of the Contrada del Drago.

The interior is Baroque and consists of one nave with three bays and a deep apse. On the marble main altar from the workshop of Mazzuoli (1694) is a Bust of Saint Catherine of Siena in polychrome terracotta by Lorenzo di Mariano, known as Marrina, from about 1521-1524, while behind it the Pietà and Saints of Vincenzo and Francesco Rustici from 1613 can be seen. Also on the altar is the venerated Madonna della Tegola, a small painting by an unknown 17th-century artist who painted the image of the Madonna and Child on a tile in remembrance of the Virgin's apparition to a nun who had enlisted her help . The image of the Madonna della Tegola is clearly inspired by the older and more famous Madonna della Quercia venerated in the sanctuary of the same name in Viterbo.

On the right and left side altars are respectively the Virgin and Saints Mary Magdalene and Catherine of Alexandria with the effigy of Saint Dominic in Soriano by Domenico Manetti (1648-1649) and the Mystical Marriage of Saint Catherine of Siena by Raffaello Vanni (1650). On the right wall is another polychrome terracotta statue of Marrina depicting the Annunciation. Together with the bust of St. Catherine of Siena, they form the oldest works of the church, dating well before the 17th-century renovation of the monastery.

Willem Vandenameele