St Catherine of Siena

In the mid-1740s Tiepolo was the most sought-after decorator in Europe, and around 1746 he was at work in the Palazzo Labia in Venice, covering a ballroom with the banquet of Antony and Cleopatra. The same years produced small quiet things like this. The oval is 70 centimetres high and came from the convent of Santa Giustina in Padua. Catherine of Siena was a Dominican of the 14th century whose letters pushed a pope into leaving Avignon and coming back to Rome. The picture afterwards moved the way Habsburg property moved. It went from Graz to Vienna in 1765, then to Archduchess Maria Anna, who ended her life as abbess of a house for noblewomen in Prague, and it was bought at auction in 1822. On the crossbeam you can still make out the wreck of a signature, G. B, a gap, and a 6.