Current Location: In storage
Titles
S. Catharina
Valentine card
Maker(s)
Publisher:
Unknown
Entities
Categories
Description
A small, devotional valentine on an early example of perforated lace-paper. The single narrow sheet of thin white paper is edged with gold leaf. At upper centre, within an irregular-shaped border, is a small, hand-painted image of Saint Catherine of Alexandria, which is comparable with representations of the Saint seen in 15th-century Italian frescoes. The Saint is seen holding a palm in her left hand and leaning against a wheel with her right arm. Her head is surrounded with an aureole. The paper is decorated with five, hand-painted roses. At lower centre is a hand-painted lozenge edged with red 'flames' and the name: '?S. Catharina' at the centre. This valentine is closely comparable to one which was sold at Christie's in 1993, lot 193, and which shows Saint Rosina. This card is dated c.1800-20. See sale catalogue: _Victorian Valentine Cards_, Christie's, South Kensington, Tuesday 9th February, 1993, lot 193, p.20, with black and white photograph. See also Frank Staff for a reproduction of another early devotional valentine featuring 'Saint Theresia'; Staff, Frank, _The Valentine & Its Origins_, London, 1969, no. 159, p. 127. Mounted on the same album leaf as another devotional valentine, P.14417-R-94 and P.14417-R-93, a valentine which employs an image reminiscent of the style of religious painting of the early Renaissance. See also Frank Staff,_The Valentine & Its Origins_, London, 1969, for reproductions of other earlier devotional valentines: nos 13 and 14, p. 25 (on parchment, mid 18th-century) and no. 159, p. 127 (on vellum, mid 18th-century).
Legal notes
Bequeathed by Dr J. W. L. Glaisher, 1928
