CATENA, Vincenzo

This painting Catena, a pupil of Giorgione, represents a type of devotional image in which Christ bearing the cross is removed from Passion scenes involving a large number of figures.

Giangiorgio Trissino (1478-1550) was a poet and architect, one of the first patron of Andrea Palladio.

The young woman tenacious chastity is defended by a huge sword.

Early Venetian portraiture is well illustrated by the Portrait of a Young Man by Vincenzo Catena. Characteristic of the tradition of portraiture established by Catena’s master Bellini is the bust-length format with a blue-sky background. The painting shows the sitter in the austere, formal dress of Venice’s governing class with just a hint of luxury provided by the fur lining that peeps out from under his black robe. The sitter’s features are described with delicate precision, and are made to appear convincingly three-dimensional through careful modelling in light and shade. The rigid symmetry of the composition lends the sitter a certain dignity, but it precludes any effect of movement. The scale is smaller than life, and the picture is painted on wood, with smooth, virtually invisible brushstrokes.

The stone around the saint’s neck was not enough to finish her off: she is “resurrected” by an angel from the lake of Bolsena. Her redeemer, who also rose from the dead, is now ensconced in the clouds with the standard of the cross in a mandorla of light.

The composition clearly derives from the devotional pictures of the Bellini school from around the late fifteenth century and first decade of the sixteenth century. Despite many minor retouchings all over the surface, this painting has preserved its wonderful original colours.

Catena is perhaps best known for his Sacre Conversazioni (Sacred Conversations) of which this is a characteristic example. It is a late work, probably painted around 1520-25, when Catena’s style approaches that of Andrea Previtali, especially in the greater sense of softness to the modelling of his figures.