  About the Artwork
  
  
  This serene sculpture depicts Saint Catherine of Alexandria (287-305) - a princess and early Christian martyr - as a fasionable lady of the late 1400s. Her delicate hands grasp her attributes, symbolic objects related to her biography that helped late medieval viewers identify her. Her left hand supports an open book. She wielded her formidable intellect and deep knowledge of Christian scripture to convert even the most learned Romans, making her an appropriate patron saint of philosophers and scholars. 

Her right hand holds a sword, a reference to the manner of her execution at the order of the Roman emperor Maxentius (d. 312). The South-German sculptor visualized this blade not as a weapon form antiquity but as one of the hand-and-a-half longswords that were made in his region and exported throughout Europe during the 1400s. Combined with her courtly clothing, this detail would have presented the saint to late medieval viewers as a contemporary woman of their own time.
  
  
  Title
  Saint Catherine
  
  
  Artwork Date
  late 15th century
  
  Artist
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  Life Dates
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  Nationality
  
  
  
  Please note:
  Definitions for nationality may vary significantly, depending on chronology and world events.
  Some definitions include:
  Belonging to a people having a common origin based on a geography and/or descent and/or tradition and/or culture and/or religion and/or language, or sharing membership in a legally defined nation.
  
  
  
  German
  
  
  
  Culture
  
  
  
  Please note:
  Cultures may be defined by the language, customs, religious beliefs, social norms, and material traits of a group.
  
  
  
  
  German
  
  
  Medium
  Lindenwood with polychromy and gilding
  
  
  Dimensions
  Overall: 40 × 13 3/4 × 9 1/2 inches (101.6 × 34.9 × 24.1 cm)
  
  
  Classification
  Sculpture
  
  
  Department
  European Sculpture and Dec Arts
  
  
  Credit
  City of Detroit Purchase
  
  
  
  Accession Number
  
  
  
  This unique number is assigned to an individual artwork as part of the cataloguing process at the time of entry into the permanent collection.
  Most frequently, accession numbers begin with the year in which the artwork entered the museum’s holdings.
  For example, 2008.3 refers to the year of acquisition and notes that it was the 3rd of that year. The DIA has a few additional systems—no longer assigned—that identify specific donors or museum patronage groups.
  
  
  
  21.194
  
  
  Copyright
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