The Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine

The original of this composition is a small panel by Correggio in the Capodimonte museum in Naples, about 28 centimetres high. It is first recorded in 1596, among the pictures of Barbara Sanseverino, a noblewoman of Parma, as small but a joy of extreme beauty, and it later passed to the Farnese family. Correggio shows the Christ Child on his mother's lap, slipping a ring onto the finger of Saint Catherine of Alexandria, the moment of her mystic marriage. This canvas in Boston repeats the design at almost the same size, 26 centimetres high. Who painted it, and when, is not known. Other copies of the Naples picture survive, one of them in the Hermitage in St Petersburg. This one belonged to Professor Henry Williamson Haynes and came to the museum in 1912 as a gift from his estate, catalogued at first as a Northern Italian painting. The museum now lists it as after Correggio, made from the panel in Naples.