Mystical Marriage of Saint Catherine

Michelino Molinari da Besozzo's Mystical Marriage of Saint Catherine, dated around 1420 and held in the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Siena, is a masterpiece of Lombard International Gothic and one of the most beautiful small-scale devotional paintings of the early fifteenth century. Michelino was the supreme master of the Milanese court style under the Visconti, known for an extraordinary delicacy of line, luminous color, and an almost dreamlike decorative sensibility. The Mystical Marriage of Saint Catherine — the visionary episode in which the Christ child places a ring on the saint's finger — was a popular devotional subject that allowed painters to combine the tender relationship of mother and child with a romantic narrative of saintly love.

Michelino achieves an extraordinary delicacy of figure and line unique in Italian painting of this period. Flesh tones are translucent and luminous, drapery arranged in elegant, curving patterns. The gold ground is richly tooled. The figures of the Virgin, Child, and Catherine are rendered with an intimacy and tenderness that transcend the stylized conventions of the period.