Saint Catherine of Alexandria (c. 1598) is an oil painting by the
ItalianItaly , officially the Italian Republic , is a country located on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe and on the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily and Sardinia. Italy shares its northern, Alpine boundary with France, Switzerland, Austria and Slovenia...
BaroqueBaroque is an artistic style prevalent from the late 16th century to the early 18th century. The popularity and success of the Baroque style was encouraged by the Roman Catholic Church, which had decided at the time of the Council of Trent that the arts should communicate religious themes in...
master Caravaggio. It is part of the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection of
MadridMadrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. It is the third-most populous municipality in the European Union after Greater London and Berlin, and its metropolitan area is the third-most populous city by urban area in the European Union after Paris and London.The city is located on the river...
. The painting formerly belonged to Cardinal
Francesco Maria Del MonteFrancesco Maria Del Monte, full name Francesco Maria Borbone Del Monte was an Italian cardinal, diplomat and connoisseur of the arts...
, Caravaggio's first important patron.
Saint Catherine of Alexandria was a popular figure in
CatholicCatholicism is a broad term for the body of the Catholic faith, its theologies and doctrines, its liturgical, ethical, spiritual, and behavioral characteristics, as well as a religious people as a whole...
iconographyIconography is the branch of art history which studies the identification, description, and the interpretation of the content of images. The word iconography literally means "image writing", and comes from the Greek εἰκών "image" and γράφειν "to write". A secondary meaning is the painting of icons...
. She was of noble origins, and dedicated herself as a
ChristianChristianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as presented by the revelations in the New Testament....
after having a
visionIn spirituality including religion, visions comprise inspirational renderings, generally of a future state and/or of a mythical being, and are believed to come from a deity, sometimes directly or indirectly via prophets, and serve to inspire or prod believers as part of a revelation or an epiphany...
.
Saint Catherine of Alexandria (c. 1598) is an oil painting by the
ItalianItaly , officially the Italian Republic , is a country located on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe and on the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily and Sardinia. Italy shares its northern, Alpine boundary with France, Switzerland, Austria and Slovenia...
BaroqueBaroque is an artistic style prevalent from the late 16th century to the early 18th century. The popularity and success of the Baroque style was encouraged by the Roman Catholic Church, which had decided at the time of the Council of Trent that the arts should communicate religious themes in...
master Caravaggio. It is part of the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection of
MadridMadrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. It is the third-most populous municipality in the European Union after Greater London and Berlin, and its metropolitan area is the third-most populous city by urban area in the European Union after Paris and London.The city is located on the river...
. The painting formerly belonged to Cardinal
Francesco Maria Del MonteFrancesco Maria Del Monte, full name Francesco Maria Borbone Del Monte was an Italian cardinal, diplomat and connoisseur of the arts...
, Caravaggio's first important patron.
Saint Catherine of Alexandria was a popular figure in
CatholicCatholicism is a broad term for the body of the Catholic faith, its theologies and doctrines, its liturgical, ethical, spiritual, and behavioral characteristics, as well as a religious people as a whole...
iconographyIconography is the branch of art history which studies the identification, description, and the interpretation of the content of images. The word iconography literally means "image writing", and comes from the Greek εἰκών "image" and γράφειν "to write". A secondary meaning is the painting of icons...
. She was of noble origins, and dedicated herself as a
ChristianChristianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as presented by the revelations in the New Testament....
after having a
visionIn spirituality including religion, visions comprise inspirational renderings, generally of a future state and/or of a mythical being, and are believed to come from a deity, sometimes directly or indirectly via prophets, and serve to inspire or prod believers as part of a revelation or an epiphany...
. At the age of 18 she confronted the
Roman EmperorThe Roman emperor was the ruler of the Roman State during the imperial period . The Romans had no single term for the office: Latin titles such as imperator , augustus, caesar and princeps were all associated with it...
Maximus (presumably this refers to
GaleriusGalerius Maximianus , formally Gaius Galerius Valerius Maximianus was Roman Emperor from 305 to 311.-Early life:...
Maximianus), debated his
paganPaganism is a word with several different meanings.In its broadest definition, pagan denotes all non-Abrahamic religions, that is to say it denotes all religions other than Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.Other usages are:*Paganism may mean Polytheism: The group so defined includes most of the...
philosophersPhilosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing these questions by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on reasoned...
, and succeeded in
convertingProselytizing is the act of attempting to convert people to another opinion and, particularly, another religion. The word proselytize is derived ultimately from the Greek language prefix 'πρός' and the verb 'έρχομαι' . Historically in the New Testament, the word proselyte denoted a person who...
many of them to Christianity. Imprisoned by the emperor, she converted his empress and the leader of his armies. Maximus executed her converts (including the empress) and ordered that Catherine herself be put to death on a
spiked wheelThe breaking wheel, also known as the Catherine wheel or simply the wheel, was a torture device used for capital punishment in the Middle Ages and early modern times for public execution by cudgeling to death...
. The wheel reportedly shattered the moment Catherine touched it. Maximus then had her beheaded. She became patron saint of libraries and librarians, as well as teachers, archivists, and all those associated with wisdom and teaching, and all those whose livelihoods depended upon wheels. The year of her martyrdom was traditionally held to have been 305, (the year of a major persecution of Christians under Galianus), and her feastday was celebrated on 25 November. In 1969 the Church, persuaded by the overwhelming opinion of historians that Catherine had probably never existed, removed her from the
calendar of saintsThe calendar of saints is a traditional Christian method of organizing a liturgical year by associating each day with one or more saints and referring to the day as that saint's feast day...
; by 2002, while the historians had not changed their minds, the Church had, and she was reinstated. Her qualities are supposed to be those of beauty, fearlessness, virginity, and intelligence.
Caravaggio shows Catherine with her symbols of martyrdom, the wheel and sword, as a single female figure in an interior devoid of architectural allusions. The image appears with a boldness and an immediacy that combine the nobility of the subject (St. Catherine was a king's daughter) with the almost plebeian pride of the model (she has been identified as Fillide Melandroni, a famous courtesan who frequented the palazzi of Del Monte and other patrons of the arts). The breadth of conception and realization, and the perfect mastery of a very difficult composition (the figure and objects completely fill the painting, in a subtle play of diagonals) are striking. Caravaggio here chose a "grand" noble approach that heralds the great religious compositions he would soon do for
San Luigi dei FrancesiThe Church of St. Louis of the French is a Roman Catholic minor basilica and titular church in Rome, not far from Piazza Navona. The church is entitled to the Virgin Mary, to St. Dionigi Areopagita and St. Louis IX, king of France...
. The extraordinary virtuosity in the painting of the large, decorated robe is absorbed as an integral part of the composition. This is something his followers would not often succeed in doing, for they frequently dealt with the single components of the painting individually, with adverse effects on the unity of the whole.
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