Deesis con san Paolo e santa Caterina

Giulio Romano was Raphael's most trusted pupil, and around 1520 that lineage is written all over this panel. The subject is a deesis, an old formula of intercession, with the Virgin and John the Baptist above and Saints Paul and Catherine below. Giulio's Saint Catherine borrows directly from a figure in Raphael's Vatican fresco of the Disputation, the master's classical calm still guiding his hand. This is years before he moved to Mantua and invented the playful, rule-bending architecture and painting of the Palazzo Te that made him famous. The debt to Raphael ran so deep that for a long time the picture was given to Raphael himself, and was reattributed only when preparatory drawings in Giulio's hand came to light. It stood on the high altar of the convent church of San Paolo in Parma, was taken to Paris under Napoleon, and returned in 1816.