The Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine
Paolo Veronese (Paolo Caliari) (1528 to 1588) · About 1547
The Virgin Mary sits at the centre holding the infant Christ, who leans forward to slip a ring onto the finger of a young woman kneeling at the right. She is Saint Catherine of Alexandria, the learned princess who, according to legend, was betrothed to Christ in a vision and later martyred on a wheel. Other saints gather around: an old man with a book, a soldier, a figure with a palm of martyrdom. The mood is quiet and courtly, a gathering of friends rather than a miracle, and the colours are the soft greens, rose and silver that Veronese would make famous.
He was barely twenty when he painted this, still working in his native Verona before the move to Venice that made his name. You can see the young painter learning. The figures are arranged in a shallow frieze like a relief, the drawing is careful and the drapery folds are sharper than in his mature work, but the light is already his: cool, silvery daylight rather than the golden glow of Titian. Look at the fabrics, the striped sleeve of Catherine and the brocade at the Virgin's knee, painted with a precision that shows the son of a stonecutter who wanted to prove he could compete with the finest painters of the region.
The subject was often chosen to mark a real marriage, and this canvas is thought to commemorate a wedding that united two Veronese families in 1547. It stayed in private collections for four centuries and was bought by the museum from a Swiss owner in 1995. It is one of very few early Veroneses outside Europe. Compare it with the Tintoretto nearby and you have Venetian painting at a crossroads, one artist all drama, the other all light.
Did You Know? Veronese was named after his home town, and this picture was painted there before he had ever set foot in Venice, the city he is remembered for.
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