The Mystical Marriage of Saint Catherine of Alexandria

The Mystical Marriage of Saint Catherine of Alexandria is an episode taken from the Golden Legend by Jacques de Voragine. It is a classic subject in devotional painting for private use, as is the case here with the painting housed at the Château de Bussy. According to Christian hagiography, Catherine is said to have been born around 290 into a noble family in Alexandria, Egypt. One night, she saw Christ in a dream and decided to devote her life to him, considering herself his betrothed.

Catherine of Alexandria, a very beautiful young woman, was the only daughter of the King of Costa. She refused to marry the Emperor Maxentius, declaring herself devoted to Christ. Maxentius then sent her the wisest men, philosophers and orators, who tried to turn her away from her faith in Christ. But Catherine, endowed with great intelligence and a wealth of knowledge, succeeded in converting them, arousing the emperor’s wrath; he condemned them to be burned at the stake and Catherine to torture.

A theme frequently depicted in^{fifteenth-century} painting and later in the Italian Renaissance, this sacred union between the saint and the infant Jesus often takes the iconographic form of a wedding ring slipped onto the saint’s finger; she is sumptuously dressed to indicate her princely status. The depiction of the dream, however, is subject to variation. Depending on the region of Italy and the artistic school, the real world and the world of dreams may be depicted side by side, linked by a mediator or separated by a boundary, a mandorla or a cloud. Thus, in the painting by Annibale Carracci housed in the Capodimonte Museum, dating from the late^16th century, two ghostly angels are depicted to embody the dream. At the same time, Ludovico Carracci broke with convention by omitting the ring on the saint’s finger and instead signifying the dream through her closed eyes.

It is very difficult to determine which Italian school produced the painting by Bussy, acquired by Jean-Baptiste-César de Sarcus. As this type of work for private devotion was very much in vogue, there are models that were probably used by several painters, often from different schools of training, but all part of a single figurative tradition that endured into the following century.