Description
Peter Paul Rubens’s Saint Catherine of Alexandria survives here as a working counterproof of an etching made around 1620. The robed saint stands above a broken wheel, holding a palm frond as her drapery spreads around the body. Pen, brown ink and black-chalk corrections supplement the printed marks, making the sheet a meeting point between the etched design and further decisions made by hand.
A counterproof transfers a freshly printed image to another sheet, changing its orientation and giving the artist another way to examine the composition. Here, the additions preserve that practical encounter with the saint’s image. Lines and tonal passages can be adjusted while the underlying printed arrangement remains available for comparison. The work offers a close view of image-making as an ongoing process, where devotional subject and the demands of printmaking are held together on the same surface.
Read our guide to giclée prints or browse the Peter Paul Rubens collection.
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