Saint Agatha

In 1693, when the Borghese family's pictures were listed room by room, this small panel was written down as a Leonardo. No one holds to that now. The Galleria Borghese files it simply as Lombard, 16th century, and traces the design to a lost painting by Bernardino Luini, a Milanese painter who followed Leonardo's soft, smiling manner. That borrowed sweetness is what misled the old cataloguer. The young woman is Saint Agatha of Catania, martyred in the 3rd century, and the stemmed dish she holds so calmly carries her own severed breasts, the sign of her torture. Small white jasmine flowers are scattered across her halo. When the art historian Adolfo Venturi described the panel in 1893, he found the painting weak overall, except for the hand holding the dish.