Returned to lender The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
The Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine
Parmigianino (Girolamo Francesco Maria Mazzola) Italian
Not on view
This diminutive unfinished painting shows the mystic marriage of Saint Catherine—her attribute of the wheel is merely suggested behind her bare shoulder—to the Christ Child. The unidentified saint at the right may be a portrait of the sculptor Valerio Belli, who Parmigianino may have known in Rome in the 1520s—thus it is possible that this exquisite sketch-like painting may have been done for him. Such works by Parmigianino were acquired by collectors in the sixteenth century, and this particular painting once belonged to an illustrious collection in the seventeenth century, despite that it was incomplete.
