Venetian
St. Catherine of Alexandria, late 14th Century.
Tempera with gold leaf on wood panel.
Late Gothic painting in the Veneto. Catherine, identified by the spiked wheel in the first attempt at her execution, would have been one in a series of saints flanking the Madonna and Child. The sweeping rhythms in her drapery, the stern expression in her face, and the relatively deep palette show the influence of the leading painter at Padua, Guariento di Arpo. The combination of the persistent stylization of Byzantine art with the elegance and emerging naturalism of the International Style would characterize Venetian painting through the mid-15th Century.