Lot Details
Lot 506
Attributed to Luca Cambiaso
Saint Catherine Rescued from the Wheel
Brown ink and wash on paper
27 3/4 x 20 inches (70.5 x 50.8 cm)
Provenance:
Private collection, New York
Saint Catherine of Alexandria was one of the most beloved of Christian saints from the early Middle Ages well into the Renaissance. According to her legend, she was a learned Christian noblewoman who lived in Roman Egypt in the early 4th century CE. A brilliant speaker, she handily defeated a group of pagan philosophers in a public debate, which so incensed the local magistrates that they condemned her to death. The means chosen for her execution was a monstrous machine incorporating a huge spiked wheel, or perhaps several of them. However, rather than killing her, the device broke apart and set her free. The outraged authorities subsequently had her beheaded.
During the Middle Ages and early Renaissance, Catherine was portrayed as a Mediaeval princess, lavishly dressed, wearing a coronet, and holding a fragment of a spiked wheel, usually in quiet conversation with other saints. Starting in the mid-16th century, however--around the time this drawing was created--artists began to focus on the drama of Catherine's attempted execution. Some painters showed the wheel spinning wildly and exploding in all directions, from which the firework known as a "Catherine Wheel" takes its name. In this version, created by an artist probably working in northern Italy during the late-16th century, the heavens are shown opening to reveal God the Father with a host of angels led by the Archangel Michael, who has just smashed the machine to pieces, while the would-be executioners flee in terror.
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