Monday 16 January 2023

St Catherine at the Ashmolean

The Ashmolean was my local museum for a stage in my life - a couple of hundred yards away! - and given the number of times I've been there I should know all the representations of my patron saint it contains, but Dr Abacus sends me this picture of a statue of the blessed Catherine he and his daughter spotted a few days ago, and it is new to me. It seems to be 15th-century German, and I've seen other images ascribed to the workshop of Niklaus Weckmann (I'd love to know how the historians of art work these attributions out). The saint has lost most of her sword which looks a bit odd, and this is one of the representations in which she treads on a chunk of her wheel, which as a result appears far from deadly. Good to add another to the archive.

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