Giovanna Garzoni

Of superb quality and in excellent condition, this Saint Catherine of Alexandria is a new and fascinating addition to the corpus of miniature paintings by Giovanna Garzoni. It is executed in the artist’s distinctive stippling technique, described by the 18th century art critic and historian Pietro Zani as ‘miniature granita’, of using the tip of the brush to create a myriad number of tiny dots in order to build up the composition. The skin is depicted with hundreds of dots while the hair is painted with a combination of dots and linear strokes, and areas of shadow are created by pale washes of blue or red beneath the dots. It is a painstaking process which imbues the work with a remarkable luminosity, enhanced by the brightness of the parchment support.

In stylistic and technical terms, the present sheet may be compared with a signed miniature Portrait of Leopoldo de’ Medici by Garzoni in the Uffizi, datable to c.1646-1648, whose pointillist technique shares with this Saint Catherine of Alexandria what has been aptly described by one scholar as ‘an almost palpable vibration of the form.’ Also comparable, particularly in the delicate treatment of the face, is a reproductive miniature by Garzoni after a painting by Orazio Gentileschi of Mary Magdalene in the Desert. Commissioned by Vittoria della Rovere, Grand Duchess of Tuscany, Garzoni’s copy can be dated between 1642 and 1650 and is today in a private collection. A Saint John the Baptist in the Wilderness, in another private collection, may also be likened to the present sheet.  

The attribution of this Saint Catherine of Alexandria to Giovanna Garzoni has been confirmed by Sheila Barker, who dates the work to the artist’s brief time in Rome between 1641 and 1642, following her return from France and shortly before she moved to Florence to work for the Medici. Barker further notes that the head of the saint in this miniature is very close to that of the Virgin in Correggio’s painting of The Mystical Marriage of Saint Catherine of Alexandria of c.1527, now in the Louvre. It may be noted that, in the late 1630s and early 1640s, Correggio’s painting belonged to Cardinal Antonio Barberini in Rome, and Garzoni may have had access to the painting through the auspices of her patron Anna Colonna Barberini, the Cardinal’s sister-in-law. Cardinal Barberini took The Mystical Marriage of Saint Catherine of Alexandria with him when he went into exile in Paris in 1645 and there presented it to Cardinal Mazarin, so it is likely that the present sheet, if indeed based on the head of the Virgin in Correggio’s painting, was executed sometime before that date.