The Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine

The Jesuit Daniël Seghers (1590-1661) has gone down in history as a painter of garlands, festoons, and wreaths of flowers in connection with religious presentations, a genre that his mentoring teacher Jan I Brueghel had introduced within the Antwerp art scene of flower painting. Seghers was very popular and his order was one that enjoyed a market value all too well. His paintings were often used as gifts for a select public and quite often they were a strategic act. Given that the central portion of a painting regularly had to contain a painted sculptured work, it is not surprising that Seghers saw an ideal collaborator with Quellinus. The grisaille with which Quellinus had enriched the cartouche, depicts the mystical marriage of Saint Catherine of Alexandria.