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Holy Family with the Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine
Tommaso d’Antonio Manzuoli, called Maso da San Friano (Italian, 1531–1571)
c. 1560
- Medium
- oil on panel
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- Image: 148 x 103 cm (58 1/4 x 40 9/16 in.)
- Culture
- Italy
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, European Painting and Sculpture
- Credit line
- Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
The marriage shown in this painting is called “mystic” because it was a purely symbolic. The infant Jesus places a ring on the finger of Catherine of Alexandria, a fourth-century saint who had a vision of dedicating herself to God and remaining a virgin instead of marrying. Note the otherworldly quality of the women and children’s elegant faces, compared to the naturalism of elderly Saint Joseph, who may be a likeness of someone the artist knew.
