Compounding Greekness: St. Katherine “the Egyptian” and the Sta. Croce Micromosaic

Abstract

This article is the first critical study of a small panel painting of St. Katherine of Alexandria, discovered sixty years ago on the reverse of the well-known micromosaic icon of the Man of Sorrows at Sta. Croce in Gerusalemme in Rome. Proceeding from close visual and material analyses, supplemented by unpublished conservation photographs, the article calls into question the original identity of the figure represented, revealing the extent to which it was adapted on the panel’s journey through the Mediterranean between Byzantium and Rome. The article spotlights the southern Italian leg of that journey. It was in Apulia, in an act of repurposing and rededication, that the unknown original figure depicted on the panel was transformed into Katherine of Alexandria and that this transformed image was joined with the micromosaic Man of Sorrows to form one bifacial icon. In elaborating on the implications of this rededication, the article revises the theory of the double-sided icon’s patronage in Italy, connecting it instead to major political figures in Angevin Naples. Beyond new historical details, research into the adventure of the bifacial Sta. Croce icon affords fresh insight into how such foreign objects were received in the Latin West ca. 1400. While the micromosaic side of the icon is best known for its associations with the Mass of St. Gregory, a legend that pegged the micromosaic’s origins to Rome, its fusion with St. Katherine speaks to a now-eclipsed origin tradition for the icon, one that underscored a provenance in the Greek East, specifically Egypt, the epicenter of Katherine’s cult. Katherine’s unconventional costume, the style in which she was depicted, the inclusion of Greek epigraphy, and the distinctive punchwork ornamentation of the gold ground all contributed to this conceit, which indicates a desire to emulate the requisite terms of dedication customary in the Christian East.