Plautilla Nelli, Saint Catherine Receives the Stigmata, Last Supper Museum of Andrea del Sarto
Saint Catherine Receives the Stigmata
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The painting needed a miracle and it happened… on canvas. Restored in 2009, Plautilla Nelli’s Saint Catherine Receives the Stigmata at the Last Supper Museum of Andrea del Sarto presented its share of challenges. In the words of conservator Rossella Lari “A large amount of repainting had been executed in an attempt to redress its extensive loss of color, and the painting had been severely damaged by various causes, including centuries of pigeon droppings, whose acidic composition had corroded the painting’s surface in many places. Over time, rice paper storage tissue had inadvertently stuck to the panel, which was also sorely pockmarked in numerous spots: someone had taken a hammer to the crevice-ridden lunette in a disastrous effort to minimize the panel’s uneven grain. Half scrubbed and half-coated, the panel waited. Could anything be done to save it?
When I first saw the painting, I noticed how Saint Catherine’s gaze was turned upwards, looking intently at the blackened clouds. Surely, I thought, there had to be a source of Divine Light hidden somewhere under all that paint and grime. Finally, there, among the slowly whitening clouds, I found it—a tiny strip of yellow light that gave meaning to the entire image. However faintly it finally appeared, the painting’s Divine Presence had not been erased. It was still there, for Saint Catherine—and the rest of us.”
Text from Jane Fortune’s Invisible Women Forgotten Artists of Florence.
Text from Jane Fortune’s Invisible Women Forgotten Artists of Florence.