The first documented record of this canvas is in the inventory and appraisal of the assets left on the death of Don Francisco de Benavides Dávila y Corella, 9th Count of Santisteban del Puerto, drawn up by the painter and scholar Antonio Palomino y Velasco in 1716. Although the appraisal is relatively high, Palomino does not identify the author, although the second inventory in which it appears, entitled "...", does.Reason for the linked paintings. Aggregation of the ancestors of Don Francisco."which describes it as follows: "Another on panel of nra. The Child and St. Cathaline at her betrothal, with the Child wearing a ring with a gilt and black frame, by a Neapolitan painter called Santafede, mistaken for that of Rafael de Urbina."which, although dated 1750, must have been written much earlier, possibly with the participation of the king's painter himself.
Although the artist, Fabrizio Santafede, trained in the workshop of the Sienese painter Marco dal Pino, who lived in Naples, he distanced himself from the master from the outset with devotional works of symmetrical, balanced composition and gentle, harmonious forms that convey serenity. He painted numerous compositions of the Virgin and Child and various saints. Particularly notable among them is the solemn and colossal panel of Madonna and Child between Saint Benedict, Saint Maurice and Saint Placidus of the Medici chapel of Gragnano in the church of San Severino and San Sossio in Naples, signed and dated 1593, in which Pierluigi Leone de Castris (1991, p. 262) distinguishes, among other influences, a personal reworking of Raphaelesque compositional formulas, an aspect that must have been perceived by the Spanish artists, which would explain the observation "mistaken for that of Rafael de Urbina" by the author of the inventory.
In this case, the subject is the dream that Saint Catherine had after her baptism in which the Christ Child betrothed her, a betrothal that enabled her to withstand the persecution and torture of the emperor Maxentius. Unlike the other similar compositions of the Virgin and Child with a kneeling saint, in this panel Santafede only paints the central motif and does not depict any other saint in the background.
The Virgin's face in this panel, her gesture and the position of her arms and hands, particularly the one resting on the saint's back, are very similar to the present panel in the church of San Severino, while the Christ Child resembles the canvas of the same subject and similar size in the Hermitage (no. Ð "Ð-5353), with the difference that the child looks at Saint Catherine and not, as in the present panel, directly at the viewer. Saint Catherine has a hairstyle and headdress similar to the one on the saint in the Holy Family with Saint Dorothea sold at Sotheby's on 14 April 2011 (lot 36).