Shop art print and framed art St. Catherine of Alexandria by Caravaggio

Saint Catherine of Alexandria (Italian: Santa Caterina d'Alessandria) is a painting by Caravaggio, painted around 1598 and now in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid. It was painted in memory of the trial and conviction of Beatrice Cenci for parricide, using the courtesan Fillide Melandroni as a model. It formed part of the collection of Cardinal Francesco Maria del Monte, who commissioned this unique devotional work. Unlike many of Caravaggio's other works, the history of this painting is well known. His seventeenth-century biographer Bellori mentions it in parallel with other pictures painted during this period under del Monte's protection, and associates it in particular with "a woman in a shirt playing a lute" (no doubt a reference to The Lute Player) to emphasise Caravaggio's tendency to adopt "a darker colouring, as [he] was already beginning to accentuate the dark". "In 1626, Caravaggio's estate is recorded as belonging to Uguccione del Monte, the cardinal's heir. It was then sold and came into the possession of the Barberini family for several centuries, probably through an acquisition made by Cardinal Antonio Barberini, brother of Pope Urban VIII, whose portrait Caravaggio had painted around 1603. In 1934, Caravaggio entered the Thyssen-Bornemisza collection through a gallery in Lucerne. The bulk of this collection was finally purchased by the Spanish government and moved to the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid in 1993". The initial analysis by Roberto Longhi, [...]

 

This artwork is a painting from the classical period. It belongs to the baroque style.

 

« St. Catherine of Alexandria » is kept at Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, Madrid, Spain.

 

Find the full description of St. Catherine of Alexandria by Caravaggio on Wikipedia.