About the Image:
This is a typical example of the two-sided panels carried in fifteenth-century religious processions. Such objects were regularly handled and exposed to the elements. On one side, the theologian Thomas Aquinas and the mystic Catherine of Siena, who holds the heart that Christ gave to her, flank the Crucified Christ. On the reverse, Saint Dominic holds a stem of lilies and spreads his cloak protectively over a group of kneeling Dominican nuns and novices, suggesting that this panel belonged to a Dominican convent.
The letters “IHS” in the background on both sides are a Christogram: a monogram derived from the first three letters of the Greek name of Jesus, iota-eta-sigma. source
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This image is in the public domain.
