Virgin and Child with Sts Mark and Jerome

1520 · Private collection

religious

Catena is perhaps best known for his Sacre Conversazioni (Sacred Conversations) of which this is a characteristic example. It is a late work, probably painted around 1520-25, when Catena's style approaches that of Andrea Previtali, especially in the greater sense of softness to the modelling of his figures.

Virgin and Child with Sts Mark and Jerome

About the Artist

Vincenzo Catena

1480 – 1531

Venetian painter of religious subjects and portraits. Catena was a man of good birth and independent means who moved in humanist circles and may have been the link between these circles and Giorgione. He is first mentioned in 1506 in an inscription on the back of Giorgione's portrait Laura (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna), according to which they had entered into some kind of partnership. Nothing else is known of this arrangement. The main influence on his style was Giovanni Bellini. His early paintings can be awkward and stiff, but from c. 1510 his work matured under the influence of the late Bellini, Cima, and Titian into a style that was derivative but handsome, with pleasing handling of diffused light and warm colours.

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