Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine (Beccafumi)

Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine is a oil on canvas painting by Domenico Beccafumi, executed c. 1528, now in the Palazzo Chigi-Saracini in Siena. Along with the usual saints in such a scene, Saint Peter and Saint Paul are shown in the foreground and Saint Sigismund, Saint Dominic, the infant John the Baptist and Bernardino of Siena in the background. Its tone is influenced by Raphael's Madonna of the Baldacchino and Fra Bartolomeo's works.[1]

Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine (c. 1528) by Domenico Beccafumi

It is first recorded in 1538-1539 in the Dell'Orafo chapel in the church of Santo Spirito in Siena. Vasari's Lives of the Artists particularly praised the saints' clothes in the work. Its predella was removed and is now mostly lost, though one panel survives in the Kress collection in the Philbrook Museum of Art and two were in the Scharf collection in London and are now in the Getty Museum. Two sketches survive in the Uffizi's Gabinetto dei Disegni e delle Stampe.