Saint Catherine

c. 1520

Jean Bellegambe (French, c. 1470–c. 1535)

Jean Bellegambe depicted Saint Catherine and Saint Barbara wearing luxury fashions from his own time. Saint Catherine—identifiable by the sword with which she was martyred and the wheel on which she was tortured—wears her sleeves slit at the forearms, revealing puffs of fine white linen. Her crown, decorated with fleurs-de-lis, and red cape, lined with spotted ermine, were fashionable among the 16th-century French monarchy and highlight her status as a princess. Saint Barbara, seated in front of the tower where her father locked her away from suitors, wears the popular French hood attached to a red-velvet caul over her hair, her sleeves netted and tiered. The saints’ attributes and finery made their identity and status legible to churchgoers, helping to inspire their piety.

Status: On View, Gallery 202
Department: Painting and Sculpture of Europe

Artist: Jean Bellegambe
Title: Saint Catherine
Place: France (Artist's nationality:)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: 1515–1525
Medium: Oil on panel
Dimensions: 82.5 × 28.1 cm (32 1/2 × 11 1/16 in.); Framed: 110.5 × 56.6 × 7.7 cm (43 1/2 × 22 1/4 × 3 in.)
Credit Line: George F. Harding Collection
Reference Number: 1983.376
IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world. Learn more.: https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/100346/manifest.json

Charles Sterling and Edward S. King, “A Bellegambe Triptych Reconstructed,”
Journal of the Walters Art Gallery 11 (1948), pp. 45–49, figs. 2, 4.
Sophie Speth Holterhof, “Identification de la Vierge à l’Enfant de Jean Bellegambe,” unpub. typescript, Brussels, Musée Royal d’Art Ancien, 1963.
Sophie Speth Holterhof, “La Vierge à l’Enfant de Jean Bellegambe,” unpub. typescript, Brussels, Musée Royal d’Art Ancien, 1964.
Max J. Friedländer, rev. English ed., Early Netherlandish Painting, Brussels and Leiden, vol. 12, 1975, pp. 134–35,146 n. 158.
Robert Genaille, “L’Oeuvre de Jean Bellegambe,” Gazette des Beaux-Arts,
6th ser., 87 (1976), p. 24, no. 23, fig. 21.
Robert Genaille, “Jean Bellegambe de Douai et la tentation du maniérisme,” in À travers l’art français: Du moyen âge au XXe siècle, Archives de l’art français 25, Paris, 1978, p. 127.
Susan Frances Jones in Martha Wolff et al., Northern European and Spanish Paintings before 1600 in the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, 2008, pp. 2-7, ill.

Saint Paul (Minn.) Art Center, The Age of Belief, 1966–67, no. 6.

Achillito Chiesa, Milan, by 1925; sold, American Art Association, Anderson Galleries, New York, part I, Nov. 27, 1925, no. 42, to Harding; George F. Harding, Jr. (d. 1939), Chicago; bequeathed to the George F. Harding Museum, Chicago; offered for sale, Sotheby’s, New York, Dec. 2, 1976, no. 263, withdrawn; ownership transferred to the AIC, 1982; accessioned, 1983.3

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Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

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IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world.

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