Saint Catherine, sword in her right hand, palm in her left
ca. 1500–1510
Medium
Engraving
Dimensions
sheet: 5 7/8 x 4 1/8 in. (15 x 10.5 cm)
Classification
Prints
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1934
Accession Number
34.56
Tags
Art Historical Context
Behold *Saint Catherine, Sword in Her Right Hand, Palm in Her Left*, a engraving by Nicoletto da Modena, created around 1500–0. This intimate work, measuring just 5 7/8 x 4 1/8 inches, captures the Christian martyr Saint Catherine of Alexandria. She stands poised with a sword in her right hand—symbolizing her beheading after surviving a spiked wheel—and a palm frond in her left, traditional emblem of victory over death. Nicoletto, an Italian engraver from Modena active in the late Renaissance, drew inspiration from masters like Andrea Mantegna, blending precise line work with expressive figure...
About the Artist
Nicoletto da Modena
Nicoletto da Modena was an Italian engraver active in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, one of the most prolific and stylistically eclectic printmakers of the early Italian Renaissance. The details of his biography remain uncertain — his precise birth and death dates are unknown, and he is identified primarily through the body of prints that bear his name or monogram. He appears to...