(Milan 1480/85–1553)
Saint Catherine of Alexandria,
oil on panel, 63 x 50 cm, framed

Provenance:
art market, Italy;
where acquired by the present owner

Exhibited:
Milano, Palazzo dell’Arte, Mostra di Leonardo da Vinci, May – October 1939, cat. no. 143 (according to a label on the reverse)

We are grateful to Cristina Geddo for endorsing the attribution.

The present painting of Saint Catherine of Alexandria is another autograph replica of the composition of the same subject in the Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence (inv. no. 1890, 8544, 381, 64 x 50 cm.). The production of replicas of the same subject was typical for Giampietrino’s working practice. The saint is shown half-length turned to three-quarters without a halo, nude and with long curling hair, within a rocky setting. She has turned to her right with her hands crossed over her breast in prayer, with the wooden wheel of her martyrdom clearly visible.

Giampietrino’s oeuvre oscillates between the sacred and the profane: in works such as the present panel he depicted female saints in a sensual manner; this approach was to inspire Correggio and Lombard Seicento painting (see C. Geddo, Una nuova Maddalena del Giampietrino, Cinisello Balsamo 2009, p. 291). The style, iconography and formal qualities of the present painting leave no doubt as to its status as an autograph work of the artist’s own hand. His painterly technique aimed at heightening the quality of chiaroscuro generated by contrasting the female nude and the shadowy landscape setting of a cave from which the saint dramatically emerges, thus allowing her body to be better illuminated.

The stylistic proximity of the present work with the altarpiece representing the Madonna of Loreto with Saints John the Baptist and Catherine in the church of Ponte Capriasca in Lugano suggests that this work belongs to the artist’s advanced maturity, around the 1530s. The female figures in both works show a strong contrast between the body and the delicate profile. These same features also occur in the Diana the huntress in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (inv. no. 1989.21), which derives from a print by Gian Giacomo Caraglio (circa 1500–1570).

Giovanni Pietro Rizzoli, il Giampietrino was one of Leonardo’s apprentices. He worked in Milan and the surrounding territories during the first half of the Cinquecento until his death in 1553. He entered the workshop of Leonardo during the mid-1490s where he came into contact with painters such as Boltraffio and Marco d’Oggiono (see P. C. Marani Giovan Pietro Rizzoli detto il Giampietrino. Milano, notizie dal 1495 circa al 1549, in: I Leonardeschi. L’eredità di Leonardo in Lombardia, Milan 1998, p. 275). His production consisted primarily of half-length male and female saints, executed for private devotion, and he only rarely painted full scale altarpieces. He adopted the refined technique of painting in transparent veils of colour from Leonardo and interpreted this in an entirely personal manner.