BARTOLOME ESTEBAN MURILLO Seville (1618 / 1682) "Saint Catherine of Alexandria"

Oil on canvas. Bibliography: - Hereza, P., Corpus Murillo. Paintings and drawings. Hagiography, (pending publication), catalog number [H-110], as a work by Murillo. Reference bibliography: - Valdivieso, E., Murillo. Critical catalog, 3 vol., Madrid, 1981; - Valdivieso, E., Murillo, Catalog raisonne of paintings, El Viso, Madrid, 2012; - Perez Sanchez, A. and Navarrete Prieto, B., The young Murillo, cat. Expo., Museum of Fine Arts of Bilbao and Junta de Andalucia, 2009; - Hereza, P., Corpus Murillo. Paintings, drawings. Commissions, Seville City Council, ICAS, 2019. Bartolome Esteban Murillo represented the learned saint of Alexandria on more than one occasion. Known are his works from his youth from the Mie Prefectural Art Museum in Mie-Ken (Japan), which belonged to the Duke of Hijar and went to the Luis Felipe de Orleans collection, or the one that was in the church of Santa Catalina in Seville and after a long journey through different European collections, he returned to Spain to be part of the Focus Abengoa Collection. The painting presented here, from a private collection in Madrid, must be related by its technique and composition to the painting preserved in the Pushkin Museum in Moscow, identified with the missing example from the Robert Langton Douglas collection. It shows Saint Catherine following her traditional iconography. Due to her birth into a noble family, she represents her dressed in rich clothing and, because she is the daughter of a king, wearing the crown on her head with a delicate floral decoration. The ring that she wears on her left hand, rather than her lineage, refers to one of the best-known episodes of her hagiography: that of her mystical betrothal to Christ. She carries in her right hand the sword with which she was beheaded and her palm that alludes to her condition as a martyr. Her left arm rests on the cogwheel, an instrument of one of the tortures to which she was subjected and which was exploded by lightning that ended up blinding her executioners. With a highly correct drawing, on a neutral background, the figure emerges from the darkness through a bright color, which Murillo enhances with the beautiful color harmony produced between the purple of the dress and the yellow of the cloak, as complementary colors. The painter represents the saint with a natural position but clothed in nobility, placing his hand on her chest and directing her gaze to heaven with a gesture of mystical rapture, showing her resignation and dedication to divine designs . The characterization of this female face, both in its expression and in its formal conception, presents numerous parallels with Saint Rufina on the canvas of Saints Justa and Rufina kept in the Museum of Fine Arts of Seville. This beautiful work by the Sevillian painter will be included and studied under number [H-110] in Hereza, Pablo: Corpus Murillo. Paintings and drawings.Hagiography (pending publication) as a work by Murillo with a chronology of h. 1652-1657. Measurements: 121 x 91 cm.