page_title: Girdle of Thomas
section_title: Art for the Prato relic
hierarchical_section_title: Girdle of Thomas / Gallery / Art for the Prato relic
caption_attribution_description: Il vescovo di Prato ostende la sacra cintola dal pulpito del duomo
context_page_description: The Girdle of Thomas, Virgin's Girdle, Holy Belt, or Sacra Cintola in modern Italian, is a Christian relic in the form of a "girdle" or knotted textile cord used as a belt, that according to a medieval legend was dropped by the Virgin Mary from the sky to Saint Thomas the Apostle at or around the time of the Assumption of Mary to heaven. The supposed original girdle is a relic belonging to Prato Cathedral in Tuscany in Italy and its veneration has been regarded as especially helpful for pregnant women. The story was frequently depicted in the art of Florence and the whole of Tuscany, and the keeping and display of the relic at Prato generated commissions for several important artists of the early Italian Renaissance. The Prato relic has outlasted several rivals in Catholic hands, and is the Catholic equivalent of the various relics held by the Cincture of the Theotokos of Eastern Orthodox Church and Holy Girdle of Syriac Orthodox Church
context_section_description: The Prato relic is kept in a reliquary in the Cappella del Sacro Cingolo in Prato Cathedral, and still exhibited five times annually, on the birthday of the Virgin Mary on September 8 and other feast days.  In the Middle Ages the display coincided with the three days of the Prato (trading) fair, and was accompanied by elaborate civic ceremonies and festivities.  After 1348, matters relating to the relic were controlled by the Opera del Sacro Cingolo, a four-man lay body elected by the city council, who retained one third of the revenues collected from the pilgrims to the relic to fund their work.
  Following an attempted theft in 1312 and growing numbers of pilgrims, the city decided they needed to build a new chapel for the cathedral to hold the relic, which was previously kept in the cathedral choir.  The new chapel is at the west end of the left aisle, near the main door.  It begins with a screened-off area under the first arch of the nave, but extends back into a new section built out of the side wall of the cathedral.  Completing the chapel took the rest of the century, and the girdle was finally installed on Easter Sunday in 1395.  The chapel has frescoes of Stories of the Virgin and the Cintola by Agnolo Gaddi (1392–1395). The 18th-century altar, which encloses the Cintola, is crowned by a marble Madonna with Child (c. 1301), considered one of Giovanni Pisano's masterpieces.
  Presumably because the Prato relic has always been kept folded in a reliquary, and there are many rival relics, it is noticeable that the Tuscan artists depicting it cannot agree as to its precise form, but several knots along its length and tasselled or divided ends are common features.
  Two successive pulpits for the public display of the relic in Prato were built, the first was apparently inside the cathedral and is now gone, but was probably decorated with the 14th century reliefs now in the cathedral's museum.  The second was built outside, projecting from a corner of the cathedral, in the 1430s by Donatello and Michelozzo, with a relief frieze of putti.  This is very high, and does not allow a close view of the relic when it is displayed. This pulpit is still used today, though the rather worn original reliefs have been moved to the museum and replaced by copies.  The museum also has the reliquary by Maso di Bartolomeo of 1446–47, decorated with putti' matching the outside pulpit; he also made the very fine Renaissance metalwork screens closing off two sides of the Cintola chapel from the aisle, which were partly paid for by the Medici.  A later glass and metal reliquary now houses the relic.  The main pulpit inside the cathedral, for normal preaching, is decorated with reliefs by Donatello's pupil Antonio Rossellino and Mino da Fiesole and was completed in 1473. The central relief panel is a Madonna della Cintola.  The main altarpiece of the cathedral, installed in 1338, had been the same scene, probably by Bernardo Daddi, from which the main panel is now lost, and the cathedral still contains other painted and terracotta relief representations by Ridolfo Ghirlandaio and others.
caption: The Prato girdle displayed in 2007 from the Donatello pulpit.
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