Saint Catherine of Alexandria

A young saint turns her face up into golden light, one hand on her heart, her elbow resting on the wheel meant to kill her. Raphael painted this moment of ecstasy at the end of his years in Florence.

The story behind the painting

Raphael painted Saint Catherine around 1507 to 1509, towards the end of his stay in Florence, and the painting shows the young artist in transition. Wikidata gives 1507. Catherine was a fourth-century princess of Alexandria who converted to Christianity and had a vision of mystic marriage to Christ. When she refused to renounce her faith, Emperor Maxentius planned to bind her to a wheel, but a thunderbolt destroyed it, and he had her beheaded instead. Three studies and a cartoon for the painting survive; the 1507 cartoon, now in the Louvre, is the closest to the finished work, though its background was left blank.

What to look for

Catherine stands before a calm country landscape of blue sky, hills and trees, reflected in water to her left. Golden light falls from the top left onto her face. Her lips are parted, her right hand rests on her breast, her left hand presses into the fabric of her robe, and her elbow leans on the wheel. Her torso twists strongly as her head turns over her right shoulder toward the sky. In the foreground Raphael painted small flowers, including a dandelion in the bottom left corner. He left out other symbols of the saint, such as the sword or the palm. The panel measures about 72 by 56 cm, according to Wikidata.

Meaning and intent

The painting is about ecstasy, a moment of divine bliss, and the peaceful setting keeps the saint apart from the violence of her death. The dandelion may be a sign of grief or of Christ's Passion, since some German and Netherlandish painters placed dandelions in Crucifixion scenes. The religious feeling still recalls Pietro Perugino, while the graceful contrapposto shows the influence of Leonardo da Vinci and is believed to echo his lost Leda and the Swan. The sculptural form and the foreshortened upturned head come from Michelangelo's Saint Matthew, and the pose also evokes classical statues such as the Venus pudica.

Legacy

Scientific study has revealed how Raphael worked. He used natural ultramarine, madder lake, ochres and lead-tin yellow for the gown, and mixed finely powdered glass into some pigments to make the oil dry faster. Infrared images show a free-hand drawing under the paint, yet also traces of pouncing along the right shoulder and sleeves, transferred from a cartoon. The art historian Jurg Meyer zur Capellen argued that Raphael copied the design free-hand, but the later evidence of pouncing challenges that view. Hugo Chapman links the loose charcoal of the cartoon to Raphael's study of Leonardo. The painting is now in the National Gallery, London.