According to tradition, Catherine of Alexandria was of noble birth and exceptionally learned. For her Christian faith she was tortured, imprisoned, and eventually beheaded by Emperor Maxentius in the fourth century. Veronese shows her in prison, gesturing toward the dove that brought her celestial food during the twelve days of her confinement. The dark drama of this affecting painting contrasts strikingly with the artist's more familiar mythological paintings, in which the emphasis is on sunny, decorative splendor. This newfound expressive intensity is the hallmark of Veronese's finest work of the 1580s. He employs the figure's beautiful contrapposto pose to encapsulate the saint's spiritual life. Beneath her left foot is a piece of the knife-edged wheel with which she was tortured, transformed here into an emblem of triumph. In her right hand she holds the martyr's palm. With the upraised, open gesture of her left hand and her intense gaze she embraces the heaven-sent source of her release. There are no early notices of the painting, which may have adorned a small altar in a Venetian church. A drawing after the picture is in the Uffizi, Florence.