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The article discusses the pictorial representation of medieval Saint Humility of Faenza (Rosanese Negusanti), the founder of the female order of the Vallombrosans, during the Middle Ages. It provides a biographical outline of the life of this 13th-century woman religious, notes her characterization by contemporaries as possessing miraculous powers, and relates attempts to advocate for her canonization. The images of her discussed in detail include a polyptych designed for Vallombrosan convent of San Giovanni Evangelista by Italian painter Pietro Lorenzetti, which was later transferred to the convent of San Salvi, as well as several no longer extant paintings described in Italian manuscripts from the 16th through 18th centuries.

Music was an important subject in the art of Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882) and Edward Burne-Jones (1833-1898), and the inclusion of portative and positive organs is a key to understanding the Pre-Raphaelites' changing relationship with medieval and Renaissance art. Engravings from Bonnard's Costumes Historiques (1829), for example, were copied and re-emerge in their works. The organ was traditionally associated with images of female sanctity, especially St. Cecilia. A comparison of the renderings of St. Cecilia legend in Rossetti's wood engraving (1857) and Burne-Jones's series, Le Chant d'Amour (1863-1877) shows how the sacred origins of the composition are subverted, turning them into sensual images. This transition is related to the interest in Venetian art which develops in paintings by Rossetti and Burne-Jones in the later 1850s. Walter Pater's criticism of Giorgione sheds light on Burne-Jones's approach to musical subject, and places the art of these Pre-Raphaelites in a wider Victorian context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]