Saint Genevieve, born in the fifth century, is the patron saint of Paris. She was a nun, and helped protect the city from attack from the Huns and the Franks. Here, she holds the candle that miraculously relit after the devil blew it out while she was praying alone one night.
Saint Apollonia was a virgin martyr who lived in the second century. She was tortured during an uprising in Alexandria: her teeth were pulled out and she was told she would be burnt to death unless she renounced her Christian faith. She refused, and threw herself into the flames. Considered the patron saint of dentists and dental problems, she is often depicted with the pair of pliers used to extract her teeth.
This painting was originally part of a multi-panelled altarpiece (‘The Saint Catherine Altarpiece’ in Dresden) made by Cranach in 1506, shortly after he was appointed court painter to the Elector of Saxony, Friedrich the Wise.
Both paintings are first recorded in the copies of the Saint Catherine Altarpiece made by the Torgau painter Daniel Fritsch, which are dated 1586 and 1596 (now Gotisches Haus, Stiftung Dessau Wörlitz and the Evangelical church (Dorfkirche), Berlin, Alt-Tempelhof, respectively). According to an inventory taken at Schloss Hartenfels, Torgau, in 1610 there was in the ‘Schöne Fürstenkammer’ an ‘alte gemahlte Taffel von Ölfarben darauff die Historien von der Catharina’ (‘an old picture painted with oil paints on which is the story of Catherine’), described in 1601 merely as a ‘grosser Flügelaltar mit vergoldetem Rahmen’ (‘a large winged altar with a gilded frame’), which can probably be identified with Cranach’s altarpiece.
The altarpiece was brought to Dresden from Torgau in 1738 by the court painter Bonaventura Rossi. It can evidently be identified in the ‘Specification derjenigen Bilder, so von Monsieur Rossi von dem Schlosse zu Torgau mit nach Dresden genommen worde’ that was drawn up in Torgau on 12 July 1738, as number 2, ‘Ein Bild, worauff die Historia der Dorothea auf Holz, in 3 Feldern gemahlt’. The whole altarpiece is first recorded in the Dresden royal collection from 1786 in records of paintings to be sold; the wing panels had evidently been sawn in two by this date, separating the front and back, as inner and outer panels were listed separately.The two outer sides of the wings were sold in 1797 together with one interior side of a wing: the panel with Saint Apollonia (NG 6511.1) was sold on 27/28 July for 2 Thaler 8 Groschen and the Saint Ottilia panel (NG 6511.2) on 2 December for 11 Groschen.
All three panels were acquired at an unknown date, probably via the Dresden painter Ferdinand Hartmann (1774–1842), by Heinrich Wilhelm Campe (1771–1862), a Leipzig businessman and collector, and sold on 24 September 1827 in Leipzig. The National Gallery panels are listed in the sale catalogue as numbers 286 and 287, by Hans Holbein the Elder; number 300, the interior panel depicting Saint Dorothy and her companion, was sold as by Hans Baldung Grien. The latter was acquired by the Leipzig collector Maximilian Speck von Sternburg (1776–1856), and remained in the possession of his descendents until acquired by the Dresden Gemäldegalerie in 1996, where it had been on loan since 1931. NG 6511.1 and NG 6511.2 were purchased at the 1827 sale by a Berlin dealer, ‘v.d. Laar’, perhaps the artist Ferdinand von Laer (active 1828–1840), for a total of 50 Thaler 4 Groschen. By 1875 they were in the collection of the banker and Trustee of the National Gallery, Samuel Jones-Loyd, 1st Baron Overstone (1796–1883). They were inherited by his descendants and acquired by the National Gallery from the Loyd Trustees through a private treaty sale in 1987.
Text extracted from the ‘Provenance’ section of the catalogue entry in Susan Foister, ‘National Gallery Catalogues: The German Paintings before 1800’, London 2024; for further information, see the full catalogue entry.
C. Baker and T. Henry, The National Gallery: Complete Illustrated Catalogue, London 2001
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These paintings were originally part of a multi-panelled altarpiece with wings that could be closed to cover the central panel. As the backs of the wings could sometimes be seen, they were also decorated; that’s where these four figures, of Saints Genevieve and Apollonia, and Saints Christina and Ottilia, once appeared. These images have since been separated from the inner faces of the wings.
This altarpiece was one of the first commissions Cranach made for the electors of Saxony and was almost certainly displayed in the electors’ chapel in the castle at Wittenberg. The central panel, now in the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen in Dresden, depicts the martyrdom of Saint Catherine witnessed by Elector Friedrich the Wise and possibly Johann the Steadfast.
