The Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine

According to a late medieval legend, Catherine of Alexandria, a learned princess, saw the Christ Child in a vision and received a ring from him as a sign that she was promised to him alone. This picture shows that moment of betrothal.

Faccini painted it in Bologna near the end of a short career, which ended with his death in 1602. The museum dates the canvas to 1598 or 1599, while the Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, the standard Italian biographical reference, places it a little earlier, around 1595. It sees in the picture the soft manner of Ludovico Carracci together with a return to the way Tintoretto had painted in Venice. The canvas belonged to the Sacchetti family in Rome and came to the Capitoline when Pope Benedict XIV bought their pictures in 1748.