St Catherine at Ely

Ellie from the church visited Ely (appropriately enough) and walking round the stained glass museum at the Cathedral came upon this image of St Catherine. It's a well-known depiction, as it's clear and classic, and very accessible, and I already knew about it, though not that it originally came from the church at Wood Walton rather than Ely itself. But it's lovely that people who know me also know to look out for images of my patron saint!

Meanwhile I got it wrong when Dr Spooner (real name, no point obscuring her) posted her pictures from a visit to Roscoff in Brittany. This figure on the church altarpiece looks very much like the blessed saint, but the Dr assures me it's instead identified as Judith: that would, to be fair, make more sense, as in the legend it's Catherine who gets her head cut off, not the wicked Emperor Maxentius, otherwise often seen as a cringing presence at her feet. It has sometimes struck me as odd that in some representations of St Catherine, Maxentius gets reduced to a head: they are all post-reformation, and tend to be Spanish in cultural context, like this intensely dramatic treatment by Antonio Vela Cobo. Now I wonder whether there wasn't some iconographical crossover with Judith, another feminist hero avant la lettre. No wonder Artemisia Gentileschi was fascinated by both of them.