Saint Dominic in Soriano: The Cavallino Painting

The Dominican convent in Cavallino (Lecce, Puglia) holds a seventeenth-century oil painting of Saint Dominic in Soriano (Fig. 1). The painting refers to a miracle that purportedly took place on September 15, 1530, when the Virgin Mary, Mary Magdalene, and Saint Catherine of Alexandria appeared to the friar Lorenzo da Grotteria, sacristan of the convent of Saint Dominic in Soriano Calabro (today Calabria), granting a vera effigie of the titular saint to the altar of the church. After the publication of the Raccolta dei miracoli by Silvestro Frangipane in 1621, devotion to the icon of St. Dominic in Soriano grew extensively, and later, St. Dominic in Soriano gained Spanish protection under Philip IV