(Sansepolcro um 1500–1566)
Saint Catherine of Alexandria crowned by two angels,
tempera on panel, 119 x 72 cm, framed

Exhibited:
Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil São Paulo, Mestres do Renacimento, Obras-Primas Italianas, , 13 July–23 September 2013 and Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil Brasilia, 12 October–5 January 2014

Literature:
Mestres do Renacimento, Obras-Primas Italianas, exhibition catalogue, São Paulo 2013, p. 96-97 (as Raffaellino del Colle)

The present painting is an important early work by Raffaellino del Colle and is characterised by bright, intense colours, and the elegant forms of the figures. The compositon displays an erudite synthesis of a well-assimilated academic classicism and the affectation of Mannerism in its most elegant form. The academic elements present in the painting can be traced back primarily to Raphael’s celebrated fresco depicting the Prophet Isaiah, now on display above a lesene in the Church of Saint Augustine in Rome, executed in about 1513. This composition was in turn modelled after Michelangelo’s Prophets and the Sibyls in the Sistine Chapel. A further detail borrowed from the classicist, academic culture of early 16th-century Rome is Saint Catherine’s hairstyle, with her tresses knotted on top of her head, which echoes the hairstyles of two antique sculptures, the Apollo of the Belvedere and Crouching Aphrodite.

The motif of the Saint’s crossed legs with her right foot leaning foreword echoes the posture Giulio Romano created for the Madonna of the Sacra Conversazione, painted in about 1523 for the Church of Santa Maria dell’Anima in Rome (see C.L.C.E. Witcombe, Raffaellino del Colle and Guilio Romano’s Holy Family with Saints in S. Maria dell’Anima, in “Gazette des Beaux-Arts”, CXIV, 1989, pp. 51-62; A. Nesi, Leonardo Grazia e Benedetto Pagni: echi dello stile di Guilio Romano tra Pistoia e Pescia, in “Arte Cristiana”, XCIII, 2005, pp. 183-188). The martyr’s elongated neck, her small, oval-shaped head, the position of her arm, her right hand holding a book, are modelled on Parmigianino, especially the Madonna in his Vision of Saint Jerome, (executed for the Chapel of Maria Bufalini in the Church of San Salvatore in Lauro in Rome, today conserved at the National Gallery in London). The stylistic choice of elongating the Saint’s arms also derived from Parmigianino and remained well-represented in Raffaellino’s repertoire, from the Madonna of the Sacra Conversione in the Church of San Michele in Città di Castello (about 1535), to the Madonna in a drawing with the same subject discovered at the collection of prints and drawings (Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe) in the Uffizi Gallery, and the Madonna of a further Sacra Conversazione, signed and dated 1543, in the Church of Santa Maria dei Servi in Sant’Angelo in Vado (see A.Nesi, Alcuni disegni inediti di Raffaellino di Colle e altre note a margine di una monografia su Pierantonio Palmerini, in “Accademia Raffaello. Atti e studi”, 23, 2005, 1, pp. 21-22).

All the aforementioned features, along with a clearly recognizable style of execution characterised by the precision of its forms and the orchestration of its colours, suggest that the present Saint Catherine of Alexandria may be dated to the end of the 1520s.

Raffaellino del Colle was a pupil of Giulio Romano in Rome who experienced with intensity the creative trends within Raphael’s workshop, before taking an active part in the developments of Roman painting until the Sack of Rome in 1527 Typical of Raffaellino’s production are, above all, the facial features of the Saint and the two angels, which are very similar to those of the Madonna and the two flying angels in the Immaculate Conception he painted for the Collegiata in Mercatello sul Metauro (Pesaro-Urbino), dated by some to the 1550s, although it was actually executed twenty years earlier (for a dating to the 1550s see M. Droghini, Raffaellino del Colle, Fermignano 2001, p. 130; per its dating to the beginning of the 1530s, A. Nesi, Pierantonio Palmierini. Cultura figurativa ed esperienze artistiche di un pittore urbinate, prima e durante la decorazione dell’Imperiale di Pesaro, Fermignano 2004, p. 89). The Saint’s elaborate, dynamic posture can be compared to another work by the painter from Colle di Sansepolcro, dating to the end of the 1520s and with a visible influence of his Roman period: the ‘affresco staccato’ (detached fresco) depicting San Leone Magno at the Pinacoteca in Sansepolcro.

We are grateful to Alessandro Nesi for his assistance in cataloguing this lot.