Martyrdom of St Catherine

In 1653 Guercino was in his early 60s and the most celebrated painter in Cento, the small town where he was born. His neighbours commissioned this canvas as a diplomatic gift, meant for Cardinal Alderano Cibo, the pope's legate in nearby Ferrara. The subject is the death of Catherine of Alexandria, taken from the medieval Golden Legend. Guercino gives it no crowd and no spectacle. Catherine kneels with her hands bound while a bare-shouldered executioner takes her by the hair and raises his sword. After the town gave the picture away it drifted for two centuries, resurfacing in London before Tsar Nicholas I of Russia bought it in 1850.