Mariage mystique de sainte Catherine

In May 1527 the troops of Emperor Charles the Fifth broke into Rome and sacked it, and among the artists who fled was the young Parmigianino, who made his way home toward Parma and settled for a while in Bologna. This small panel comes from those unsettled years around 1528. It shows the moment Saint Catherine, a legendary early martyr, is betrothed in a vision to the Christ child, who slips a ring onto her finger while the Virgin holds him. The painting was probably never finished, and may only ever have been a trial sketch in oil for a larger work now lost. The Virgin's pose echoes a Raphael Madonna that Parmigianino had studied in Rome, carried north in his memory after the city that trained him emptied out.