A rarely depicted subject. It appears in a fresco commissioned in 1610 from Guido Reni in the church of Santa Maria Maggiore, Rome, but the composition is very different from the present drawing. The fresco occupies a vertical space, and it shows an angel rather than the Virgin attaching the separated hand. A similar story about the restoration of Pope Leo I's hand is in the ‘Golden Legend’. Through his three works in favour of sacred icons, written under the protection of the Muslim caliph of Damascus, Saint John Damascene (c.675–c.749) opposed the iconoclasm of the Christian emperor Leo III (717–741). Leo deceived the caliph into believing that John was a traitor, as a result of which the hand with which John had written his works was cut off.