St. Catherine Of Alexandria

Honorius Marinari (Florence 1627 – Florence 1715)

St. Catherine of Alexandria

Oil on canvas, 63 x 50 cm

With frame, 74 x 61 cm

The Saint Catherine of Alexandria exhibited here can be traced back to the production of Onorio Marinari, son of the painter Sigismondo Marinari, from whom he drew his first teachings, subsequently he became a pupil of his cousin Carlo Dolci (Florence, 1616-1687), together with Agnese Dolci, he collected the master's legacy, carrying on his school for a period. He worked mainly in Florence for Florentine and Tuscan clients, but he did not dedicate himself only to painting. In fact, he was also a prominent intellectual with regards to scientific disciplines. The first scholars to present the figure and activity of Onorio Marinari are Pellegrino Orlandi, who praises the painting skills of the Tuscan artist in the Pictorial Abecedario of 1733, and Abbot Lanzi, who refers extensively to the artist in the Pictorial History of Italy, published in Milan in 1831. The information given by biographers speaks of a lunate with Baldassarre Franceschini known as the Volterrano (Volterra, 1611 – Florence, 7 January 1690), as well as a series of trips that led him to visit Rome and northern Italy, coming into contact with the works of Raphael and Correggio. These new experiences led Marinari to a stylistic evolution that is evidenced in the official catalog of the Uffizi Gallery of 1833 we read: 'After the imitation of the master who is usually the first exercise of the new painters, and often again, due to the diversity of the natural, their first damage, and, as Lanzi also observes, a second style was formed following his own talent, grander, more ideal, and of greater stain, as the artists express themselves: of which various essays remain in Santa Maria Maggiore, in S. Simone and in several Florentine picture galleries."Honorius Marinari (Florence 1627 – Florence 1715)
These new requests can be recognized starting from the 1960s, without however there being a complete break with Dolci's training, so much so that Honorius was chosen for numerous commissions by the Medici court, in particular after the master's death in 1686, as he was considered direct heir of Dolci, long in the service of the grand dukes. His fame at the Florentine court and among city clients earned him prestigious commissions even late in life: at the beginning of the eighteenth century Marinari was involved in the execution of frescoes in Palazzo Capponi in Florence, a construction site in which the most important Tuscan painters of the old and new generation. Returning to the canvas, it fits stylistically and also on an iconographic level with the series of female figures, such as saints, women of antiquity or biblical stories, created by him over the course of his long career. The precious robes, the jewels, the half-length cut, the touching expressiveness add to the predilection for neutral or shady and dark backgrounds which contrast with the brightness of the foreground, capable of illuminating the white skin of the protagonists and creating sparkling highlights on the metal objects, such as the teeth of the wheel in this case, and on the precious jewels that adorn the saint. The classicist approach adapts to a devotional language typical in the Florence of the time, as demonstrated by Dolci's works, while the softness of the complexions fused with a metered and careful chromaticism denotes the influence of the neo-correggio current, much appreciated at that time in the capital Tuscan. Finally, also comparing the anatomical details, from the short hands to the faces with a soft and round cut, passing through the whiteness of the complexions and the tidy hairstyles, a common line can be deduced in rendering the female figures, as well as the Saint Catherine here taken under examination.