St. Catherine of Alexandria in Egyptian Dress Notebook

A most unusual representation of St. Catherine of Alexandria (c. 287-c. 305), virgin martyr known for her eloquence and erudition, in Egyptian dress. She is the patron saint of girls and unmarried women, students and teachers, nurses, librarians, and lawyers, and artisans who work with wheels. + Feast: November 25 + NOTE WELL: The image is not pixelated. The obvious dots of colour that you see are owed to the image’s original printing process: chromolithography. Chromolithography, which employed limestone slabs in its printing process—one slab for each colour, is distinguished by irregular "dots" of colour visible in its output. At the original size of 2.75” x 4” (7 cm x 10 cm), the dots are barely noticeable. Enlarged at two times, three times, four times the original size or more, they figure much more prominently. The images resulting from enlargement are, however, not displeasing and rather resemble Georges Seurat’s pointillist paintings! Think ‘A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte’. Both chromolithographs and Seurat paintings rely to a greater or lesser extent on the brain, not the eye, to achieve colour mixing and tonality. + Image Credit (M 025): Detail of an antique image of St. Catherine of Alexandria in Egyptian Dress in chromolithography, original publisher--probably French--unknown, late 19th century, from the designer’s private collection of religious ephemera.