O Casamento Místico de Santa Catarina

Michelino da Besozzo was one of the leading painters of the International Gothic, the courtly style that ran across Europe around 1400, and this small panel in Siena is the only work he actually signed. Look below the Virgin's mantle and you find the words Michelinus feci, 'Michelino made me'. The scene is tender rather than grand. Mary holds the Christ child on her lap while he slips a ring onto the finger of Saint Catherine, who kneels in a fur-lined rose cloak, her loose blond hair marking her out as high-born. Saint Anthony the Great stands to one side with his little pig at his feet. Recent study of the panel turned up real lapis lazuli worked into its blues.