Saint Catherine of Alexandriac. 1335/1340

Shown from the waist up, a woman wearing a garnet-red robe rests a book and a palm frond against a spiked wheel, all against a gold background in this arched, vertical painting. The woman’s light skin is tinged with pale green, and her cheeks are faint pink. Her shoulders face us, and she slightly looks up and off to our right with gray eyes under curved brows. She has a long, straight nose, and her small, full, bow-shaped lips are closed. Her wavy blond hair is parted down the middle and pulled back at the base of her head. Her red robe has a pattern of delicate diamond shapes and the underside is white, visible where it turns over around the neck. The robe is fastened with a round, gold disk the size of a DVD. Letters there read, “S.K.A.T.E.R.I.N.A.” around the perimeter of a four-lobed, red, blue, and gold geometric design at the center of the brooch. The sky-blue garment beneath her robe has a marine-blue collar. She clasps the palm frond in her left hand, to our right. The hand rests on the book, which is propped against the wheel in front of her, so the frond reaches beyond and above that shoulder, nearly to the edge of the painting. The wheel is edged with short, curving spikes like talons. The woman’s gold crown and round halo blend into the shimmering gold background, which is visibly cracked in some areas. The top of the panel curves up as if into an arch but is cut across the panel over her halo.

Description from the National Gallery of Art.

Bartolomeo Bulgarini painted this in about 1335/1340, aged about 35. It is now at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.

How it was made

Tempera

Pigment bound with egg yolk. It dries in minutes and can’t be blended wet, so painters built up form with fine, hatched strokes. It was Europe’s main panel technique before oil.