Santa Catalina de Alejandría

Around 1507 Raphael had just spent time in Florence, copying whatever the older masters there could teach him. One of the things he copied was a lost Leonardo of Leda, with its long spiralling turn of the body, and you can feel that study working here. Catherine leans against the spiked wheel that was meant to kill her, but Raphael leaves out the sword and the martyr's palm you would usually see. Instead her weight winds up through her hips and shoulders into a single twisting line, her face lifted to a gold break in the clouds. It is less a scene of torture than a moment of looking upward. Down among the rocks at her feet he painted a few small plants, including a dandelion gone to seed, a bitter herb that northern painters used as a sign of Christ's suffering.