Portrait of Caterina Cornaro

The woman here is Caterina Cornaro, a Venetian noblewoman who became the last monarch of the kingdom of Cyprus. Married to the island's king in 1472 and widowed within a year, she reigned in her own name until 1489, when Venice pressed her to hand Cyprus over to the Republic. She spent her final years keeping a small court at Asolo. This portrait dates from around 1542, more than 30 years after she died, so it is a memory rather than a likeness drawn from life. It shows her as Saint Catherine of Alexandria, her name-saint, with the saint's broken wheel set in the lower right. For a long time it carried the name of Titian himself. The Uffizi now places it in Titian's workshop and has suggested the hand of his relative Marco Vecellio, though scholars have not fully settled which brush it was. The wheel is the clue that the sitter and the saint were meant to be read as one.