In 1463, Giovanni di Paolo, a master painter from Siena, was selected to decorate the Pope’s newly finished church in Pienza. He excelled at narrative subjects, and this painting—from the predella, or lowest register, of a large altarpiece—is one of his finest surviving examples. Isabella and her peers, like Philip Lehman, whose distinguished collection is now part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, prized early Renaissance paintings from Siena for their exquisite details and jewel-like finishes. When Berenson recommended this one, he observed that Giovanni di Paolo is “all the rage now because the collectors not only of paintings, but of objets d’art are after him, and paying long prices for him.”