Mattia Preti : martyrdom of St Catherine of Alexandria

Abstract

St Catherine of Alexandria, a third century martyr from the times of Emperor Maxentius, kneels at the centre of a high platform with a tall wooden shaft, her torso bare and her rich garments falling down in angled delicate folds. She looks tenderly into a diagonal shaft of light, which stands for the divine, breaking loose from in between dark cloud formations as her long hair lutters in a breeze. A muscled executioner, with contrasting bare torso, yellow ochre breeches and white sash, moves forward to strike the decisive blow. He is blinded by the divine shaft of light and attempts to block it with his sole hand as a philosopher makes one last attempt to turn her in to paganism by showing her a golden statue of Zeus. The saint’s hands are tied behind her back with a rope held by a young man standing behind the architectural feature of the large oval window. A crowd of turbaned onlookers, and a knight on horseback, stand behind the executioner’s platform in the immediate background. A high ranking personality, probably the Emperor Maxentius, stands watching in the middle ground to the right underneath an oblique view of a structure in a classical architectural style, complete with luted columns and sets the scale in the background. [Excerpt]