Due sculture di Agnolo di Ventura al Louvre e il Monumento funebre del cardinale Matteo Orsini in Santa Maria sopra Minerva a Roma

Two sculptures housed in the Louvre Museum are here connected and attributed to the Sienese sculptor Agnolo di Ventura. They portray Saint Catherine of Alexandria entrusting a kneeling ecclesiastic to a Virgin and Child, following a widespread iconographic motif in Italian tomb sculpture. Strong evidence allows these two pieces to be recognised as part of the funeral monument of Cardinal Matteo Orsini (†1340), whose surviving effigy is now set in the vestibule’s wall to the left of the apse in the Dominican church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Rome. Despite the serious losses, the recovery of the donor representation corroborates the possibility that the original tomb design belonged to the curial canopied wall monument type.