The Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine

Giovanni Battista Salvi was known as Sassoferrato, after his place of birth in the Italian Marches. He developed an eclectic style which emulated the fifteenth-century manner of Perugino and Raphael, but was also inspired by his contemporary Domenichino. Sassoferrato’s paintings consist mainly of immaculately painted devotional images of the Virgin and Holy Family, usually repeated in several versions. This altarpiece was painted in the 1650s for the church of S. Maria della Cima in Genzano, Italy. A squared preparatory study for the work is among sixty carefully finished drawings by the artist in the Royal Collection. It depicts an episode in the Medieval ‘Golden Legend’ which recounts Catherine of Alexandria’s vision of her mystic marriage to Christ. The spiked wheel and the sword are the emblems of St Catherine’s subsequent martyrdom. The painting was removed from the church of S. Maria della Cima in the nineteenth century and replaced by a copy which hangs there today. The 4th Marquess of Hertford acquired the painting in 1856, at the sale of Horatio Walpole, Earl of Orford.