{"id":613,"date":"2026-02-21T00:00:22","date_gmt":"2026-02-20T14:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stevewatson.info\/blog\/?p=613"},"modified":"2026-02-21T00:00:22","modified_gmt":"2026-02-20T14:00:22","slug":"zombie-iconography-in-a-portrait-of-st-catherine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevewatson.info\/blog\/2026\/02\/21\/zombie-iconography-in-a-portrait-of-st-catherine\/","title":{"rendered":"Zombie Iconography in a Portrait of St Catherine"},"content":{"rendered":"

A post on the Althouse blog discussing the Vogue <\/em>cover of \u2018Dr\u2019 Jill Biden<\/a> compared it to the figure of Catherine in a painting by Raphael.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

She commented that<\/span><\/p>\n

Catherine’s hands do not hang limply at her sides. They are expressive of ecstasy and placed in locations that would seem truly odd on a modern-day politico. Unlike Jill, she’s got her weight shifted to one side, and also unlike Jill, she’s leaning on what we know to be the device used to torture-murder-martyr her.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The hands of Raphael’s Catherine seem oddly positioned because they’re misplaced. Catherine is in the pose for nude females known as venus pudica<\/em>, and her hands are supposed to be covering her modesty – in this variant both the breasts and the pudendum. Raphael has modified the lower hand so that it is holding her clothing, but the upper hand is doing nothing useful.<\/span><\/p>\n

Statues in this pose and with a pronounced twist to the body (contrapposto<\/em>) often have some kind of an elaboration which can be used to give the statue extra support. (Even drapery would work in marble.) I notice that in the painting she’s leaning on her wheel, and I would guess that Raphael just thought that some such elaboration was a necessary part of the figure.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A post on the Althouse blog discussing the Vogue cover of \u2018Dr\u2019 Jill Biden compared it to the figure of Catherine in a painting by Raphael. She commented that Catherine’s hands do not hang limply at her sides. They are expressive of ecstasy and placed in locations that would seem truly odd on a modern-day […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevewatson.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevewatson.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevewatson.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevewatson.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevewatson.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=613"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevewatson.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":615,"href":"https:\/\/stevewatson.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613\/revisions\/615"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevewatson.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevewatson.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevewatson.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}