Saint Catherine disputing with the Doctors

Alessandro Araldi

Summary

A reproduction produced by the Vasari Society of a drawing by Alessandro Araldi. The drawing shows the interior of a church or courthouse with a row of men sitting on a bench to the left, facing towards the right. There are five figures seated on the bench, and another one seated on some steps at the head of the row; behind these figures, seven others are standing between pillars in the interior, some of which are women. The men are all wearing robes, have beards and have their heads covered either with a scarf or a hat. Most of the faces appear disengaged, but the man seated second in from the left looks directly out at the viewer and appears to be speaking. Text from the accompanying booklet produced by the Vasari Society: "No. 11 ALESSANDRO ARALDI (b. 1465; d. 1528) STUDY FOR THE FRESCO IN THE CELLA OF STA. CATERINA AT PARMA British Museum, 1895.9.15.599. (From the Wellesley and Malcolm Collections.) Silver-point heightened with white on greenish-grey prepared paper. 24.9 x 18.4 mm. (9 3/4 x 7 1/4 in.) The fresco represents St. Catherine arguing before the Doctors. The drawing is a preliminary study for the left-hand part of the composition. Six doctors, or various ages, in long robes and Oriental head-dress, are seated in listening postures close together; eight other men are seen standing behind them, some partly hidden by the piers of the open hall in which the debate goes on. The figure of St. Catherine herself, which in the fresco stands in advance of the daïs between the right-hand doctor and the throne, is missing in the drawing; other deviations occur in the arrangement of the figures farthest from the spectator. Alessandro Araldi was an eclectic painter of Parma who imitated carious contemporary masters with great versatility and no small skill. In his St. Catherine fresco, and still more in this study for it, he reproduces both the sentiment and the technical style of Pinturiccio with such fidelity that the drawing had always, and not unreasonably, passed for a characteristic example from that artist's hand or workshop, of about the period of the Piccolomini frescoes, until Signor Corrado Ricci identified it as a study by Araldi for his St. Catherine fresco at Parma ... S. C."