Notes on the Early Provenance of Paolo Veronese's Saint Catherine of Alexandria in Prison

This article provides information about the early provenance of the Paolo Veronese painting entitled Saint Catherine of Alexan-dria in Prison in The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The painting can most likely be traced back to sixteenth-and seven-teenth-century Augsburg. Descriptions that match the Veronese painting are found in the inventories of works of art of two very wealthy Augsburg merchants: one is in the post mortem inventory of Octavian Secundus Fugger (ca. 1600/1601), the other in a list of works of art from the collection of Hans Steininger (ca. 1641/42). Octavian Secundus Fugger only occasionally bought paintings from Venice, never seeking to amass a sys-tematic collection of art. The deeply religious Catholic merchant, who was a strong sup-porter of the Jesuits, hung his picture of Saint Catherine, along with other religious paint-ings, in the antechapel of his house, and it re-mained at this location until the early 17th century. The painting's later owner, however, the Lutheran textile merchant Hans Steininger, was a highly educated art collector who created one of the most illustrious collec-tions in Augsburg. In his Kunstkammer, Veronese's painting was displayed in the com-pany of mythological female figures, nymphs, and Venus, accompanied by a whole series of paintings by renowned artists such as Hans von Aachen, Christoph Amberger, Paris Bor-done, Hans Burgkmair, Joseph Heintz the Elder and Titian. Steininger's collection was dis-persed after his death, but many of the paint-ings he owned can still be identified. Veronese's Saint Catherine of Alexandria may be one of them.