Saint Catherine’s enigmatic dress
Can you imagine Saint Catherine dressed in red? That is the colour we discovered during our research when the work’s materials were analysed. It would have been part of an initial version of the clothing of Caravaggio’s figure.
Visible in the lower part of the cross-section are some light areas which correspond to the imprimatura layer and the thin whitish layer applied on top of it. This is followed by the red layer corresponding to the first version of the dress, applied in two coats. Lastly, we can see the violet-blue layer, which corresponds to the final dress, composed of a mixture of lapis lazuli, grains of azurite, cochineal crimson, charcoal black, lead white and earth pigments.