Saint Catherine (Right Wing of a Diptych)

This panel is barely 19 centimetres tall and was made as the right wing of a folding diptych. Its partner, the Virgin and Child standing in a stone niche, hangs in the same room, and together they served private prayer. Saint Catherine of Alexandria appears here in an open landscape with the sword of her execution and the broken wheel of her legend. The two wings are less evenly matched than they look. The Kunsthistorisches Museum keeps both under Rogier van der Weyden's name and dates the pair around 1451, but scholars have long found the Catherine weaker than the Virgin and usually give it to a member of his workshop. The wood is Baltic oak, the timber Netherlandish painters imported for their panels, and the diptych has been in the imperial gallery in Vienna since at least 1772.