Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine

Catherine of Alexandria, by tradition a learned young woman put to death in the early 4th century for refusing to sacrifice to the Roman gods, was also said to have had a vision before any of that happened. In it the infant Christ took her hand and slipped a ring onto her finger. That vision is the scene here.

Procaccini painted it in Milan between 1616 and 1620, on a canvas almost exactly square, about a metre and a half on each side.

It is first recorded in a private collection, and a famous one. Cesare Monti became archbishop of Milan in 1632 and gathered one of the largest picture collections in Lombardy, which he left to the archbishop's palace when he died. The paintings stayed there for generations. This canvas only reached Brera in 1896.