Saint Catherine of Alexandria in Prison

The story comes from the Golden Legend. Catherine of Alexandria, shut in a cell by the emperor Maxentius and left without food for 12 days, is kept alive by a white dove that brings her something to eat. Veronese painted it in his last years, some time between 1580 and 1585, and gave the cell nothing except a barred window high on the left and a wall of darkness. Behind her lie the broken pieces of the spiked wheel that was meant to kill her, and she holds the palm of martyrdom. The painting left Venice early. One answering its description was listed around 1600 in the estate of Octavian Secundus Fugger of the Augsburg banking family, and again about 40 years later in the inventory of another Augsburg merchant. It reached the Metropolitan as a gift in 1999.