File:1 Maso di Banco Descent of Mary's Girdle to the Apostle Thomas 1337-9 Staatliche Museen, Berlin.jpg|
Maso di Banco, ''Descent of Mary's Girdle to the Apostle Thomas'', 1337-1339, Berlin. The girdle hangs down from the virgin's hand. File:Nardo di cione, madonna del parto e donatore, 1355-1360.JPG|
Nardo di cione,
Madonna del parto and donor, 1355-1360 File:Andrea Bocchi Madonna enthroned.jpg|
Madonna enthroned with angels and apostles, including Thomas and the girdle in the centre panel File:Sebastiano Mainardi - Assumption of the Virgin with the Gift of the Girdle - WGA13865.jpg|
Sebastiano Mainardi,
Assumption of the Virgin with the Gift of the Girdle, 15th century,
Baroncelli Chapel File:Pieve delle Sante Flora e Lucilla Santa Fiora Assunzione Particolare.jpg|
Andrea della Robbia, terracotta relief File:S Agostino - Sansovino Madonna del parto 002.jpg|
Sansovino, a
Madonna del Parto, here including the Child, with a prominent belt. File:Cappella del sacro cingolo 03.JPG|
Cappella del sacro cingolo in Prato Cathedral File:Niccolò di Cecco del Mercia, Assunta che dà la Cintola a San Tommaso.JPG|14th century relief in the museum, perhaps from the first pulpit built to display the relic File:The Miracle of Holy Life Theodore Poulakis.png|
The Miracle of the Holy Belt,
Theodore Poulakis Art for the Prato relic 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. File:Prato, duomo pulpito di donatello e michelozzo.JPG|The outside pulpit at Prato by
Donatello and
Michelozzo, 1430s File:Pulpito di donatello (prato), formella 04.JPG|Detail of the original pulpit reliefs in the
cathedral museum File:Maso di Bartolomeo, Capsella della Sacra Cintola (1446-7) 02.jpg|
Reliquary of 1446-7 for the Prato Girdle, now in the Diocesan Museum, by
Maso di Bartolomeo File:Duomo di prato, pergamo di ant. rossellino e mino da fiesole 10 madonna della cintola 2.JPG|
Madonna della Cintola on the pulpit by
Antonio Rossellino and
Mino da Fiesole, completed 1473. ==Other relics==