A painting restored to all its glory
Stefano Cernotto’s depiction of St Catherine of Alexandria
MúzeumCafé 33.
The half figure of St Catherine with a palm branch and a wheel, composed in an airy landscape, first appeared publicly at the Nagyházi Gallery’s auction in May 2011 after a long period of lying hidden. Its rather poor condition may have accounted for the moderate starting price. It could be expected that restoration would reveal nothing of significance, since the picture seemed overworked and shabby, yet that was not the case. With little exaggeration, a work came to light in a nearly spotless condition. As the painting was being revived an increasing amount of data about its past emerged. Its provenance can be documented as far as the mid 1910s, when still before 1917, it was acquired by the Back collection in Szeged via Julius Boehler, a noted Munich art dealer. The painting of St Catherine was first presented to the public at the exhibition of the Szeged Friends of Art in 1917. After Back’s death in 1953 the painting was acquired by Mrs. F. Kamlach and presumably her inheritors and relatives wished to auction it in 2011. The artwork was painted by Stefano Cernotto, a so far lesser known artist working in the circle of Titian. Only three paintings by him are currently known. They are held in Viennese and Venetian collections. Palma il Vecchio’s work of 1520 depicting St Barbara and another of his earlier compositions, an altarpiece of St Lucy in Vicenza’s Church of St Stephen may have served as models for the painting. Cernotto’s St Catherine in Budapest is a mature work, one of the best paintings by the artist, which can be dated between 1535 and 1537-39. It is especially fortunate that it has remained in such a spotless condition with its bright colours, which not only increases its value but, considering its clarity and comparability, it may even mark the work as emblematic in Cernotto’s oeuvre.