The painting on panel of Saint Catherine of Alexandria crowned by two angels, signed by Giovanni Filippo de Floris, active in the Messina area in the first half of the 16th century, comes from the sacristy of Lipari Cathedral, but it was originally intended to be housed in the small church dedicated to the Saint that stood near the Capuchin garden, leaning against the perimeter walls of the present cemetery, which already existed before the “ruin” of 1544.
The Saint is portrayed standing against the backdrop of a hilly landscape, holding the palm of martyrdom with her left hand and the sword with her right, with which she pierced the Saracen placed under her feet; below right is the hooked wheel on which she was tortured. Above, two angels in flight with fluttering robes hold a crown on her head in an archaic schematism of a folk matrix.
The cult of the Alexandrian martyr, which is widespread in Sicily, is attested in Lipari by the presence of a Confraternity of the same name, whose act of incorporation before Bishop Mons. Vidal (1599-1617); this confraternity had requested that the statue of the Saint – currently allocated in this same room, however, lacking the Iconographic elements that distinguish it – be kept in the Church of the Conception at the Castle of Lipari (later called St. Catherine’s) in order to participate more easily in processions.
