The Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine

Poussin painted The Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine around 1628, an early religious work painted in Rome during the period when he was still developing his mature style between the Baroque influence of his immediate Roman environment and the classical discipline he was absorbing from ancient sculpture and Raphael. The subject — Christ placing a ring on the finger of Saint Catherine in a mystical union — was a standard Counter-Reformation devotional subject, and Poussin's treatment shows his early integration of Raphaelesque figure grace with the warmer coloring and compositional freedom of his Roman period. The work represents a transitional moment in his development, before the full austerity of his mature classical manner had been achieved.

The warm, golden tonality and soft modeling of the Virgin and saints reveal Poussin's early debt to Venetian colorism, particularly the work of Veronese, before his shift to a cooler, more classicizing palette.