The Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine

The Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, painted around 1680, is one of Murillo's latest treatments of this beloved Counter-Reformation subject — made in the final two years of his life when his technique had reached its most atmospheric and his compositions their most refined spiritual character. Catherine's mystical betrothal to Christ had been understood since the medieval period as one of the clearest instances of divine love for the human soul, the ring as the seal of an eternal covenant between the divine bridegroom and the virtuous virgin. Murillo's late vaporous style brought these celestial encounters to their highest visual expression, the figures existing in an atmospheric luminosity that suggested the immateriality of spiritual experience rather than the specificity of physical event. LACMA's holding of this late Murillo places it within one of America's most comprehensive art collections, where it represents the culmination of Spanish Baroque devotional painting in its most fully developed form.

Catherine kneels before the Virgin and Child in a heavenly setting, receiving the ring in a gesture of formal betrothal. Murillo surrounds the figures with characteristic soft atmospheric light and a luminous color scheme of blue, white, and gold, which gives the visionary subject its ethereal quality.