Saint Catherine is depicted as a full-length figure in a sumptuous dark green dress against a muted blue sky with her extremely long sword and wheel of martyrdom prominently shown.
Despite her disproportionately elongated lower body and the awkward manner in which she bends her torso, the saint radiates a calm elegance as the legendary, beautiful, educated, and incalculably rich king's daughter from Alexandria.
According to the legend, Catherine suffered martyrdom under Roman Emperor Maxentius, after arguing with 50 heathen philosophers and converting them to her Christian beliefs.
She was condemned to be broken on a public torture wheel, but an angel of the Lord destroyed the wheel and killed 4,000 of the heathen who had gathered to watch, whereupon the guard and the wife of the emperor became Christians. In the end, Maxentius ordered the beheading of Catherine.
Lucas Cranach the Elder was a German Renaissance painter and printmaker in woodcut and engraving. He was court painter to the Electors of Saxony for most of his career, and is known for his portraits, both of German princes and leaders of the Protestant Reformation, whose cause he embraced with enthusiasm.
He was a close friend of Martin Luther, and eleven portraits of that reformer by him survive. Cranach also painted religious subjects like St. Catherine, first in the Catholic tradition, and later trying to find new ways of conveying Lutheran religious concerns in art. He also famously continued throughout his career to paint nude subjects drawn from mythology and religion.
Cranach had a large workshop and many of his works exist in different versions; his son Lucas Cranach the Younger and others continued to create versions of his father's works for decades after his death. He is often considered the most successful German artist of his time.
Heilige Katharina (St. Catherine) by Lucas Cranach der Ältere aka Lucas Cranach the Elder (German) - Oil on wood panel / c. 1516 - Staatlichen Kunstsammlungen Dresden (Germany) - #womeninart #lucascranach #stcatherine #art #oilpainting #womensart #womanwarrior #fineart #germanrenaissance #germanart