Southern Netherlandish, Malines, circa 1520 | Saint Catherine

Private collection, Belgium;
by descent to the present owner

With her delicate, doll-like features and sumptuous Renaissance dress, this beautiful statuette of Saint Catherine is characteristic of sculpture in Malines around 1520. Her hairstyle, garments, heart-shaped head and elegantly slender form find notable parallels in a Saint Barbara in the Cluny Museum in Paris (inv. no. Cl. 15367) and a Saint Cecilia in the Schnütgen Museum Cologne, illustrated in Godenne, op. cit., pl. XXIX ter. The iconography of Saint Catherine with the Emperor Maxentius at her feet holding the wheel was well-established in Malines workshops; see an earlier figure of the saint in the Musée Grobet-Labadié, Marseilles (ibid., pl. VII).

RELATED LITERATURE
W. Godenne, Préliminaires à l'Inventaire général des Statuettes d'origine malinoise, présumées des XVe et XVIe siècles, Brussels, 1958; Guillot de Suduiraut, Sculptures brabançonnes du musée du Louvre, Bruxelles, Malines, Anvers, XVe-XVIe siècles, Paris, 2001, p. 42, fig. 38