At the head of the stairs, on the right, is the door opening out upon the little side street that runs off from the steep Costa Sant' Antonio, by which the house is more usually entered. It bears the inscription "The house of Catherine, the Spouse of Christ," and when we mount up into the little court and loggia, we may read another hard saying on our left: "Living, I beheld Him whom I loved." The design of the court and loggia is ascribed to Baldassare Peruzzi. Here are two oratories. The first--which is said to have been Monna Lapa's kitchen--is now somewhat gorgeously decorated in the style of the Renaissance; the ceiling and pavement (which latter is kept covered) belong to the end of the sixteenth century. Over the altar, the picture representing the reception of the Stigmata--which we find repeated in one form or another in each of these chapels--is by Fungai. The pictures--with fine Renaissance pilasters between--date from the latter part of the sixteenth century onwards, and represent scenes from St Catherine's life, with other Saints and Beati of Siena. In contrast with those in the lower oratory, they are largely concerned with her later life and with her public actions; her saving the souls of the tortured felons; her freeing a woman from an evil spirit (by Pietro Sorri); her persuading the Roman People to submit to Pope Urban (by Alessandro Casolani); and her inducing Gregory to return to Rome. The more artistically important of the series are her mystical marriage with Christ, by Arcangiolo Salimbeni, and her canonisation by Pope Pius II. (with the Blessed Bernardo and the Blessed Nera of the Tolomei below), by Francesco Vanni. The second oratory--the _Oratorio del Crocifisso_--was built in the sixteenth century on the site of the garden of the family. Over the altar is the sacred Crucifix from Santa Cristina at Pisa--a painting ascribed to Giunta Pisano--praying before which, on the Fourth Sunday in Lent, 1375, in that little church on the banks of the Arno, Catherine is said, like Francis of Assisi, to have received in her flesh the _ultimo sigillo_. "I saw," she told Frate Raimondo, "our Crucified Lord coming down upon me surrounded by a great light. Thereat by the force of my spirit, that desired to go forth and meet its Creator, my body was constrained to rise. Then from the marks of His most sacred wounds I saw descend upon me five bloody rays, which were directed towards the hands, the feet and the heart of my body. Wherefore, knowing the mystery, I cried out suddenly, 'Ah, my Lord God, I beseech you, let not these wounds appear outwardly in my body; it is enough for me to have them internally.' Then whilst I was yet speaking, before those rays reached me, their blood-red colour changed to a marvellous brightness, and in the semblance of pure light they came to the five parts of my body, to wit, the hands, the feet, and the heart."[109]