Flagellation of Saint Catherine

Bernardino Lanino · 1550/55

Medium

Brush and brown ink and brown wash, with black ink, heightened with white gouache and white oil paint, with black chalk, on lunette-shaped blue laid paper, squared in red chalk, laid down on cream laid paper

Original size

51 × 37.3 cm (20 1/8 × 14 11/16 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Mannerism

Bernardino Lanino's *Flagellation of Saint Catherine* is a masterwork of Renaissance draughtsmanship — a luminous study in which the drama of martyrdom is rendered with extraordinary delicacy on blue laid paper. Lanino trained under the celebrated Gaudenzio Ferrari in Piedmont and absorbed his master's gift for expressive, emotionally charged figures. Working in the Lombard tradition, he favoured layered technique: here, brown ink and wash establish the composition's shadows and movement, while white gouache and white oil paint bring the saint and her tormentors into relief against the mid-toned ground. The red chalk squaring across the sheet reveals its purpose — a preparatory cartoon, carefully gridded so the composition could be transferred to a larger surface with precision. The blue paper itself was a deliberate choice, acting as a middle tone that allowed Lanino to work simultaneously toward both shadow and light. The work is held by the Art Institute of Chicago as part of their distinguished collection of Italian Renaissance drawings, and it stands as one of the finer surviving examples of Lanino's graphic work outside of his painted altarpieces. Our hand-painted oil reproduction translates this intimate, layered composition onto canvas, preserving the tonal nuance and devotional intensity that Lanino built stroke by careful stroke.