Lot 2049 D α

Saint Catherine stands out from the background with a delicate movement of the head, turned slightly to the left towards the wheel of his martyrdom, which almost sinks into the background.

The painting shows the distinctive elements of Antonio de Bellis´ oeuvre: a pupil of Massimo Stanzione (c. 1585 – c. 1658), his strong naturalism of Caravaggesque derivation is associated with a fine sense of colorism and a constant search for elegance, which results in an extremely personal, refined and delicate pictorial language.

The posture of the young woman is identical to the one of the figure in the painting “Christ and the Samaritan” of the Fondazione de Vito

Both, De Vito and Spinosa, highlighted the closeness of the Saint´s traits with the woman in the foreground left in the painting “Moses causing water to flow from the rock” (National Museum of Budapest), and with the female figures in the “Finding of Moses” of the National Gallery of London (see: De Vito, 1984, figs. 43-44, 47). Even more evident, as professor Spinosa mentioned, are the concordances with other depictions bust-length Saints, such as the Saint Euphemia, formerly at Hahn in Paris, the Saint Agate in the Saint Germain Gallery, Monte Carlo, and the Saint Catherine of Alessandria from a private collection in Madrid.

When the present painting first appeared on the market, in 1974, bore an attribution to Bernardo Cavallino and was later published as a work by Antonio de Bellis by Giuseppe de Vito, in 1984. The strong affinities with the elegant manner and the refined colours, which strongly remind of Bernardo Cavallino (1616 - 1656 ca.), allow the work to be dated to the late 1640s.