Titian - Madonna and Child with St. Catherine and a Rabbit 1530
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Madonna and Child with St. Catherine and a Rabbit 1530
71x85cm oil on canvas
Louvre, Paris, France
The image is only being used for informational and educational purposes
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
Catherine is dressed as a maid of honour and is shown with her traditional attribute of a broken wheel at her feet. She and Mary are sitting in a meadow beside a fruit basket which contains apples representing original sin and grapes representing the Eucharist and the redemption of sins. In the background a shepherd looks on - a motif drawn from Giorgione and perhaps intended as a portrait of Federico Gonzaga, since an X-ray shows that the initial composition had Mary turning her eyes towards the shepherd, or of the artist, since the shepherd appears sad and aloof like the mourning Titian.
In the foreground, the wildflowers evoke the idyllic 'locus amoenus' in classical poetry and the Arcadian landscape, which is also found in works like the Pastoral Concert or the Baccanali series of Ferrara. The sensitive landscape painting is also notable, with orange stripes over a blue twilit sky, typical of Titian's highly mature phase.