Chiesa di Santa Caterina d'Alessandria

Chiesa di Santa Caterina d'Alessandria in Pisa keeps a Gothic altarpiece, the Triumph of Saint Thomas Aquinas, painted for this thirteenth-century Dominican church by Lippo Memmi and Francesco Traini. It stages a theological showdown: Aquinas enthroned in light from Christ, Moses, Paul and the evangelists, with Aristotle and Plato beside him, and the philosopher Averroes sprawled defeated beneath his feet. The guide asks why a church would need to defeat, in paint, a scholar whose ideas on reason and faith had captivated European universities.