Saint Catherine of Alexandria at Prayer

In 1566 the new pope, Pius V, made his grand-nephew Michele Bonelli a cardinal at 24, and the young man took the title Cardinal Alessandrino. This is thought to be the Saint Catherine that Titian sent him the following year. When Bonelli died in 1598, his inventory described a kneeling Catherine of the Wheel with a crucifix, by the hand of Titian, valued at 40 scudi. Titian was then nearly 80, and the museum believes he did not paint all of it himself. Much of the kneeling saint, the red curtain and the burst of light in the clouds at the upper right are judged worthy of him. The tiled floor and the arch, which never quite convinces, were left to assistants. Around Catherine lie her attributes, the spiked wheel that broke when she was bound to it, the sword that beheaded her, and the martyr's palm. The signature at the lower left lost its beginning when the canvas was cut, and only the letters TIANUS F remain.