The Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine

Veronese painted this around 1575 as the high altarpiece for a specific Venetian church, Santa Caterina, a convent of Augustinian nuns, so the saint above the altar shared her name with the building. The subject is the mystic marriage of Saint Catherine of Alexandria, the moment the Christ Child places a ring, or in this telling a lamb, into her hand. What Veronese pours into it is Venetian colour and cloth, silks and brocades rising along a diagonal of figures and music. The painting did not stay put. When Napoleon's forces took Venice, the state seized the altarpiece from the church, and it eventually passed to the Gallerie dell'Accademia, where it hangs now, moved to its present home around the time of the First World War.