Saint Catherine

Place of OriginSouthern Netherlands, probably Belgium

Dateabout 1500-1525

Dimensions34 3/4 × 12 1/4 × 8 1/2 in. (88.3 × 31.1 × 21.6 cm)
base: 12 1/4 × 7 1/2 in. (31.1 × 19.1 cm)

MediumLimestone

ClassificationSculpture

Credit LineGift of Mrs. C. Lockhart McKelvy

Object number

1947.17

Not on View

Label TextAs recounted in Jacobus de Voragine’s Golden Legend, a widely popular book of saints’ lives from about 1275, Saint Catherine of Alexandria, who was of royal origin, converted to Christianity around the year 300. For refusing the advances of Roman Emperor Maxentius and chastising him for persecuting Christians, she was sentenced to death by spiked wheels (this scene is portrayed on the Retable of Saint Andrew in this gallery). However, divine intervention resulted in the wheels’ destruction. Catherine was subsequently decapitated. One of the most popular Christian saints during the late Middle Ages in Europe, Saint Catherine is depicted with the symbolic attributes of her martyrdom, the wheel and sword. She looms above the diminutive figure of Maxentius at her feet, over whom she triumphed in her faith. The artist presents Catherine not as a 4th-century Egyptian woman, but as an aristocratic lady from the turn of the 16th century, when the statue was carved.Published References

Riefstahl, Rudolf M., "What is Conservation," Toledo Museum News, New Series, vol. 8, no. 3, Autumn 1965, pp. 51-67, repr. p. 67, (Also published as handbook).

Gillerman, Dorothy, ed., Gothic Sculpture in America, II: the Museums of the Midwest, Turnhout, Brepols, 2001, p. 421, no. 329.

Exhibition HistoryThe Toledo Museum of Art, The Collection of Mrs. C. Lockhart McKelvy, November 1964, p. 28, repr. p. 29.