Jacopo Vignali

Mrs. M. Couper, Gerrard's Cross, Buckinghamshire;

Anonymous sale ("Different Properties"), London, Christie's, 17 January 1947, lot 154 (as Furini);

Where acquired by "Dent," for 2 gns.;

Private collector, Westchester;

By whom sold, New York, Doyle's, 25 October 1989, lot 81 (as Attributed to Carlo Dolci);

Where acquired.

B. Nicolson, The International Caravaggesque Movement, Oxford 1979, p. 102, reproduced pl. 32 (as Tornioli);

B. Nicolson, Caravaggism in Europe, L. Vertova (ed.), Oxford 1989, vol. I, p. 197; vol. II, reproduced fig. 444 (as Tornioli);

M. Ciampolini, "Intergrazioni al catalogo di Niccolò Tornioli," in Antichità viva 34, no. 4 (1995), p. 32 note 4 (as Florentine School, 17th century);

R. Randolfi, Niccolò Tornioli, Todi 2022, p. 187, cat. no. OE.3 (under "opere espunte," as Florentine School).

This refined devotional painting depicts Saint Catherine of Alexandria, a figure who occupied a singular place within Renaissance and Baroque devotional culture as a paradigmatic exemplar of virtue, intellect, and faith. Celebrated for her beauty, erudition, and moral purity, and revered as a patron of philosophy, science, and learning, Catherine ranked among the most venerated female saints in Europe, second only to the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalen. Catherine appears clothed in sumptuous finery, whose material splendor serves as a visual corollary to the intellectual and spiritual sophistication for which she was renowned, making her an especially resonant devotional figure for elite audiences.

Catherine is identifiable by the broken spiked wheel—the instrument upon which her execution was attempted before it was miraculously destroyed—and by the palm branch of martyrdom presented by the attending angel. Formerly attributed to Francesco Furini, Niccolò Tornioli, and Carlo Dolci, the painting was first associated with Jacopo Vignali by Mina Gregori, an attribution subsequently supported by Sandro Bellesi.