Onorio Marinari (Florence 1627 – Florence 1715) Saint 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 attributed to the production of Onorio Marinari, son of the painter Sigismondo Marinari, from whom he received his first teachings. He later became a student of his cousin Carlo Dolci (Florence, 1616-1687). Together with Agnese Dolci, he inherited the master's legacy, continuing his school for a period. He worked mainly in Florence for Florentine and Tuscan patrons, but he was not only dedicated to painting. In fact, he was also a prominent intellectual in the disciplines of a scientific nature. The first scholars to present the figure and activity of Onorio Marinari are Pellegrino Orlandi, who praises the pictorial skills of the Tuscan artist in the Abecedario pittorico 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 the biographers speaks of an apprenticeship with Baldassarre Franceschini known as 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 which is testified in the official catalog of the Uffizi Gallery of 1833 it reads: "After the imitation of the master which is usually the first exercise of novice painters, and often still, due to the diversity of nature, their first damage, he formed himself, as Lanzi also observes, a second style following his own talent, more grandiose, more ideal, and of greater 'macchia', as artists express themselves: of which we have various examples in Santa Maria Maggiore, in S. Simone and in various Florentine picture galleries." These new instances can be seen from the 1660s onwards, without however there being a complete break with Dolcian training, so much so that Onorio was chosen for numerous commissions by the Medici court, in particular after the death of the master in 1686, as he was considered the direct heir of Dolci, who had long been in the service of the Grand Dukes. His fame at the Florentine court and among the city's patrons earned him prestigious positions even in old age: at the beginning of the eighteenth century, Marinari was engaged 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 generations were employed. Returning to the canvas, it fits stylistically and also iconographically with the series of female figures, such as saints, women of antiquity or biblical stories, made by him during his long career. The precious clothes, the jewels, the half-length cut, the touching expressiveness are added to the predilection for neutral or in any case shady and dark backgrounds that contrast with the luminosity of the foreground, capable of illuminating the candid skin of the protagonists and creating sparkling highlights on metallic objects, such as the teeth of the wheel in this case, and on the precious jewels that adorn the saint. The classicist setting is suitable for the devotional language typical in Florence at the time, as demonstrated by the works of Dolci, while the softness of the complexions fused with a measured and careful chromatism denotes the influence of the neo-Correggesque current, highly appreciated at that time in the Tuscan capital. Finally, also comparing the anatomical details, from the short hands to the faces with a soft and round cut, passing through the candor of the complexions and the orderly hairstyles, it can be deduced a common line in rendering the female figures, as also the Saint Catherine taken here in examination.