Lot 2020 Nα

This altarpiece depicting the mystical marriage of Saint Catherine accompanied by the young Saint John and angels was painted by the Master of the Stockholm Pietà, a remarkable artist active in Northern Italy, presumably in Lombardy, in the mid-16th century. The large format of the work, the complexity of its composition, the richness of the colour palette, but also many of the pictorial innovations convene to make this one of the artist's masterpieces.
The great Italian art historian Federico Zeri was the first to outline the personality and work of this artist in the Burlington Magazine in 1950 (Zeri, op. cit.). Zeri assembled a group of works housed in major public museums - the National Gallery in London, the Accademia Carrara in Bergamo, and the National Museum in Stockholm - that he considered to be unconvincingly attributed to Sodoma, a Renaissance artist active in Siena and Rome. He instead attributed the paintings to an artist to whom he attested a distinctive, idiosyncratic personal style. Zeri suspected a painter who came to Italy from north of the Alps and was primarily influenced by the art of Sodoma, but also by the Mannerism of Rosso Fiorentino, combining these Nordic and Mannerist elements to create a unique formal repertoire. Zeri christened this artist with the notname “Master of the Stockholm Pietà” after the work in the Swedish National Museum (fig. 1).
Comparing the present work with the paintings in London, Bergamo and Stockholm, which are small-format devotional paintings, one is struck by the maturity in style, colouration, composition and arrangement of the figures, but also by the profusion of narrative details. The work depicts the mystical marriage of St. Catherine, one of the most popular themes of Christian iconography that was painted throughout the Renaissance by artists such as Titian, Correggio, Parmigianino and Lorenzo Lotto. As in the works of these masters, the mystical marriage is depicted as an intimate event. The boy Jesus, seated in the lap of the Virgin Mary, places the wedding ring on the finger of the young saint, who is dressed in a splendid golden robe and richly adorned with jewellery. The artist enriches the group with the addition of the young Saint John, who kneels and kisses the hand of Jesus as a sign of reverence. Unlike most Italian masters, and following a tradition established north of the Alps, the master of the Stockholm Pietà expands the intimate scene of the mystical marriage to include angels who witness the event and increase its splendour and solemnity through their presence. The attribution of this painting to the master of the Stockholm Pietà was made by Professor Francesco Frangi. As the only ambitious, large-scale altarpiece to be painted by this master, it represents the most significant addition to the artist's oeuvre since Federico Zeri introduced him in 1950.