Saint Catharine of Alexandria

Pietro Nelli, a Florentine painter active in the 1360s and 1370s within the tradition of the Orcagna workshop, produced this image of Saint Catherine of Alexandria for a devotional context. Catherine was one of the most venerated virgin martyrs of the medieval period, celebrated for her wisdom, her mystic marriage to Christ, and her miraculous torture on the spiked wheel. This panel in the Dutch national collection forms a companion to the Saint Elisabeth of Hungary by the same painter in the same collection, suggesting they originated from a single dismembered polyptych.

Egg tempera on gold-ground panel depicting the saint with her traditional attributes of the wheel and palm of martyrdom. Nelli's Orcagnesque style is evident in the firm outlines, solid modeling, and dignified frontal presentation, with tooled punch-work in the gold halo and background.