Studies for 'The Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine of Siena' and 'The Holy Family with Saints Elizabeth, John the Baptist and Catherine'

Author: Sarah Vowles

Veronese’s pen drawings changed relatively little in style during his artistic maturity and so the present sketches, drawn on the back of a letter of 11 August 1568 from Francesco Sadinello, are valuable benchmarks. He often resorted to sketching on the back of accounts and other scraps (see I 39 and I 41), suggesting that his studio was perpetually short of paper. This sheet is a characteristic example of his dynamic compositional work in pen, including vignettes of several different subjects, which testify to the restless fertility of his imagination. A few isolated sketches record, at lower left, ideas for an Annunciation in brown wash; a woman holding a lighted candle; and the Madonna kneeling at a cradle. At upper centre is a study for a Visitation, previously and, in this author’s view, incorrectly identified as a ‘Meeting at the Golden Gate’.^[1] That subject would have been archaic at this date and, since we know that Veronese was working on a Visitation for the church of San Giacomo on Murano at this period (see I 42), it is far more likely that this represents an overspill of his ideas for that project.

Veronese treated the subject of the Mystic Marriage numerous times throughout his career.^[2] In this sheet he focuses on the arrangement of figures in the composition, trying to convey the correct blend of adoration and intimacy between the infant Christ and St Catherine of Alexandria, who is joined to him in a rite of spiritual matrimony. A scribbled note in the centre of the sheet, ‘sposi’ (‘newlyweds’), confirms the subject. At upper centre he shows the saint kneeling fully on the floor, kissing the child’s toe, while at lower right he shows Catherine in a more upright position, leaning closer to the child, who turns towards her with arms outstretched: an arrangement which is very close to the Madonna and Child with Sts Elizabeth, John the Baptist and Catherine in San Diego.^[3] It is clear from Veronese’s notes that he was considering various options: further notes in the centre of the sheet read ‘con S Zuani’ (‘with St John the Baptist’) and ‘con una santa’ (‘with a female saint’). However, he seems to have settled on the central sketch, which he marks out from those around it with a swift framing line. Here he has chosen to show not the infant Baptist, but another kneeling female saint.

The motifs explored in these sketches appear, in various reconfigurations, in numerous paintings by Veronese and it is difficult, with any confidence, to connect this sheet to a single picture. Rearick argued persuasively that it relates to The Holy Family and Saints in Brussels,^[4] pointing out that the painting was originally executed to decorate the organ in the church of San Giacomo on Murano. He drew stylistic comparisons between this sheet and I 42 which is preparatory for The Visitation, also originally painted for San Giacomo on Murano.^[5] However, Thomas Dalla Costa pointed out equal similarities to The Mystic Marriage of St Catherine in Montpellier,^[6] which underlines that the several interpretations of this subject produced by Veronese all contain, to varying degrees, similar elements.