Saint Catherine Refuses to Worship the Idols

This canvas is more than four metres wide, and that unusual shape is a clue to where it began. Mazzoni painted it around 1665 for the church of Santa Caterina in Venice, where it ran along the left side of the nave as part of a set of scenes from the saint's life. Here Catherine of Alexandria, the learned young Christian of legend, refuses the emperor's order to bow to the pagan idols. Its companion piece, showing her mystic marriage, is now kept in the museum's stores. The two were separated after 1807, when Venice's religious houses were closed under Napoleon and their contents passed to the state. The painting itself only reached the Gallerie dell'Accademia in 1965, and it hangs today in a room far narrower than the wall it was made to fill.