According to Tuscan legend, Pia de' Tolomei was murdered by her jealous husband. Pia makes a very brief appearance in Dante Alighieri's Purgatorio (5:133) asking him to pray for her.
The story was retold in a novella and two plays before being turned into an opera by Gaetano Donizetti in 1837. In the opera, Pia's brother-in-law Ghino makes sexual advances. When rejected, Ghino in retaliation tells his brother that Pia has cheated. The husband mistakes her brother Rodrigo for a lover and kills her. Ghino confesses, but too late.
Pia is also the subject of a painting (1883) by Daniel Gabriel Rosetti, now in the Spencer Museum of Art at the University of Kansas.