The cell is a small room on the edge of the garden of the former convent of the Benedictine nuns of St. Paul. On the two walls Alessandro Araldi (about 1460 – 1528), one of the most active masters in Parma at the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries, before the great Correggio, painted two scenes from the Life of Saint Catherine of Alexandria around 1514, namely "The dispute of Catherine before Emperor Maximinus" and "Saint Catherine and Saint Jerome". The style of Araldi seems here to betray in a particular way the knowledge of central Italian models, in particular the works of Perugino and Pinturicchio, to which the classical composure of the figures and the atmosphere of elegant sobriety that characterizes both frescoes refer.
