Alessandro Capalti (1810-68) operated primarily in Rome where he became a pupil of Tomasco Minardi (1787-1871) at the Academy of St Luke. He exhibited at the Royal Academy in London between 1851 and 1858. Primarily a painter of historical subjects and portraits, Capalti produced likenesses of Gwendoline Talbot, Princess Borghese, his former tutor Minardi and the tragedienne, Adelaide Ristori.

St Catherine, full-length, stands on a brightly coloured rug before a Renaissance throne on a marble haut pas. She wears a blue robe and a gold-edged red cloak. Against her right side she holds a book, an item that she is frequently depicted with in reference to her noted learning; the tome is inscribed with the Latin phrase: ‘Ego me Christo sponsam tradidi’, or ‘I have offered myself as a bride to Christ'. She holds a sword in her left hand, presumably recalling her martyrdom through beheading. To her right is the spiked wheel that was to be her instrument of torture before it was destroyed by a divine thunderbolt. The painting is executed in a dleiberate revival of the style of the Italian Renaissance - it is probably intended to imitate Raphael's earliest works.