Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine

Filippino Lippi painted this for a family chapel in San Domenico, the great Dominican church in Bologna, in the last years of his life. At its centre Saint Catherine of Alexandria receives a ring from the Christ child, the mystic marriage of the title, while saints gather around in the calm, formal arrangement Italians called a sacra conversazione. Peter and John the Baptist stand to one side, Paul and Sebastian to the other. Lippi was a Florentine, son of the painter Fra Filippo Lippi, and this commission carried his manner across the Apennines to a city that mostly knew other hands. He died back in Florence in 1504 with an altarpiece still unfinished on his easel.