After Caravaggio: Saint Catherine
She leans on the wheel that was meant to break her and looks you in the eye. The sword is theirs. The heart is hers.
Caravaggio · 1598 · Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
The original
Caravaggio, Saint Catherine of Alexandria, 1598, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid · Wikipedia
Monica's drawing
Sternum piece: flaming heart, peonies and lilies · Monica, Dark Autumn Studio
On skin
AI visualisation of a real design. Not a photograph of a tattoo.
The painting
Caravaggio painted Saint Catherine of Alexandria in 1598; it hangs in the Thyssen-Bornemisza museum in Madrid. Catherine was sentenced to die on a spiked wheel, and according to the legend the wheel broke at her touch, so they used a sword instead. Caravaggio gives her both, the broken wheel to lean on and the blade in her hand, plus a palm frond for martyrdom. The model was Fillide Melandroni, a well-known Roman courtesan who sat for him more than once. She does not look like a saint. She looks like someone who has decided.
The design
Monica's sternum piece inside the square neckline of a velvet dress: the flaming heart with peonies at the centre, the lilies reaching out to the shoulders.
Why this pairing
The flaming heart is the sign of a love that burns and does not consume, which is more or less the plot of Catherine's life. On her it reads less like decoration than like evidence of a decision she has already made.
