The Wheel Miracle of St. Catherine

In 1521 a Venetian nobleman named Marcantonio Michiel went through the collection of Cardinal Domenico Grimani in Venice and wrote down what he saw. Among the pictures he listed were works by a painter he called Joachin, and this small panel was one of them, so it had reached Italy while Patinir was still alive. The story is Saint Catherine of Alexandria. According to the legend, she was to be torn apart on a spiked wheel, but fire from heaven destroyed the wheel first. Patinir keeps the martyr and the people around her tiny and looks down on them from a high point, a way of seeing the Kunsthistorisches Museum traces to the landscapes of Hieronymus Bosch. Most of the oak panel, less than half a metre wide, goes to the country around the miracle. After Venice it entered the collection of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm, the Habsburg governor of the Netherlands.