The first episode shows Lapa, Catherine’s mother, watching her little daughter as she climbs the stairs suspended mid-air, thus realizing that this girl was different from her other children. Catherine’s early vocation was the cause of great conflict with her family, especially her mother, who judged Catherine’s childish behavior as fanaticism, trying every way she could to put an end to it.
She decided, first of all, to make Catherine get married; after various arguments, Catherine reiterated the irrevocable nature of her decision by cutting off her hair, a very unseemly act for a girl at the time. The next fresco shows the girl cutting off a long tress in the presence of the Dominican friar Tommaso della Fonte, whose words had pushed her to make this gesture.
After that episode, her mother tried to break Catherine down by forcing her to do the heaviest housework and preventing her from recollection and prayer; she also decided to take away her personal bedroom and make her sleep with one of her siblings, hoping that, without a place where she could feed her ‘daydreams,’ Catherine would sooner or later come to her senses. The young girl did not rebel, but obeyed meekly, doing all the work that was forced on her and substituting for her physical cell a spiritual cell in which she continued constantly her dialogue with Christ.
Her family’s persecution finally stopped when her father Jacopo came upon Catherine by surprise as she prayed with the dove of the Holy Spirit flying around her head, an episode shown in the third and last fresco on the wall. At this point he was convinced of the authenticity of his daughter’s vocation, and forced his wife to surrender in the face of Catherine’s will to consecrate herself totally to Christ.
The frescoes continue on the wall next to the cubicle: on the left is Saint Catherine Giving her Cloak to Jesus Christ in the Guise of a Poor Man, and on the right Jesus Offering Catherine a Crown of Gold and a Crown of Thorns. Catherine takes the crown of thorns, choosing a life made up of penance, charity to others, and prayer.