MARCELLO VENUSTI (Mazzo di Valtellina 1512-Rome 1579) THE MARTYRDOM OF SAINT CATHERINE Copper Inscribed on the reverse "Boceto Old restorations The Martyrdum of Saint Catherine, copper, with restorations 41 x 31 CM - 16,1 x 12,2 IN. PROVENANCE Probably from the collection of Maffeo Barberini, 1655, inventory of the Palazzo dei Quatre Fontaine "un rame di due palmi raffigurante una Santa Caterina con un gruppo di farisei e in alto un angelo che tiene una spada in mano". BIBLIOGRAPHY Probably M. A. Lavin, "Seventeenth-Century Barberini Documents and Inventories of Art", New York: NYU University Press, 1975, pp. 264-287. Marcello Venusti was an Italian painter of religious compositions and a portrait painter. A pupil of Perino del Vaga in Rome in the 1540s, he also worked with Michelangelo, notably on a copy of the Last Judgement for Cardinal Alessandro Farnese in 1548. Francesca Parrilla recently found a large number of small copperplates by Marcello Venusti in the inventories of the Barberini collections.