Martyrdom of St. Catherine

St Catherine, an Alexandrian princess, suffered a martyr's death during the reign of the heathen Roman emperor Maxentius, as a result of her missionary work during the period when Christians were being persecuted. She was condemned to be broken on the wheel, but it collapsed at God's command and a rain of fire killed many heathens. Here, this event is shown together with the beheading of St Catherine. The woodcut confirms the function of costume studies as independent source material, for here the saint appears in Venetian costume.

This woodcut is closely related in style and period to Albrecht Dürer's famous Apocalypse woodcut series. The French proto-surrealist writer Alfred Jarry hugely admired the print and paid special attention to the way it moves from the formal to the hallucinatory rain of fire, seeing it as a precursor of late 19th century symbolism. His study of the print appeared in the short-lived journal Perhinderion (1895), which was effectively bankrupted by his insistence that this and other Dürer prints were reproduced full-scale on laid paper, resembling the original. The woodcut formed part of the so-called King George IV album collection of Old Master prints, purchased by the Dominion Museum in 1910.

Soruces:

Web Gallery of Art, http://www.wga.hu/html_m/d/durer/2/12/1_1500/10cather.html

'L'Yamagier', https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L'Ymagier

Dr Mark Stocker, Curator Historical International Art                              November 2016