The figure is clearly identifiable as St Agatha from her palm and from the pair of amputated breasts that she displays in the glass dish. Agatha lived in Catania in Sicily in the reign of the Emperor Decius in the third century, and one of the cruel tortures she suffered for her steadfast Christian faith was to have her breasts cut off with shears. The simulated relief in the lower left corner is not perfectly legible, partly because of abrasion of the paint surface in this area, but it appears to show a battle between nude warriors and a man on horseback, of a type found on classical sarcophagi. The message is presumably that through her faith in Christ, Agatha was ultimately victorious over pagan violence and brutality.

The picture belongs to a type of image that enjoyed a particular popularity in Venice in the second decade of the sixteenth century, in which a beautiful woman is represented in half length. The type, of which important examples exist by Sebastiano del Piombo, Titian and Palma Vecchio, contains formal and expressive elements variously associated with portraiture, allegory, erotic genre and images of devotion, but in fluctuating proportions, so that its meaning is often, and perhaps deliberately, ambivalent. It is a matter of debate whether the present picture is intended as an image of the saint, which nevertheless draws on conventions of portraiture, or whether it actually constitutes a portrait of a real woman presented in the guise of St Agatha, presumably in honour of her name saint.

In favour of the latter interpretation are the portrait-like features; the elements of modern dress; the absence of a halo; and, perhaps above all, the provocative sensuality with which the figure fingers the breast and base of the palm, and which might seem indecorous for an image of devotion. Examples of other Venetian pictures in which the sitter is shown in the guise of his or her name saint include Sebastiano's Portrait of a Lady as St Agatha (London, National Gallery), Savoldo's Portrait ofa Man as St George (Washington, National Gallery of Art), and the same painter's Portrait of a Lady as St Margaret (Rome, Pinacoteca Capitolina).

Against these considerations, however, it may be noted that Cariani is not an artist who shared Sebastiano's or Titian's powers of idealisation, and that the saints in his religious pictures routinely retain a portrait-like character. Further, the fashionable elements of costume — the dress, with its slashing of the fabric on the upper arm, and the arrangement of the hair in a snood — co-exist with elements that are clearly meant to appear timeless, such as the pink shawl and the yellow cloak. Furthermore, portraits of particular women were still uncommon in Venice in the second decade and examples of the kind mentioned above, in which the sitter was shown in a particular guise, were at this early date rarer still. All this is to conclude that the picture is probably not, after all, intended as a portrait, but rather an image of the saint that catered simultaneously for the needs of pious contemplation and of sensuous and aesthetic pleasure. Evidence that contemporaries found it possible to reconcile such apparently contradictory functions in the privacy of their homes is provided by Titian's highly voluptuous St Mary Magdalene (Florence, Palazzo Pitti) of the mid 1530’s.

In the short time since it first came to public attention, the St Agatha was has generally  been dated to the beginning of Cariani’s career, about 1510-1514. This is chiefly because it was clearly influenced by two 'beautiful woman' pictures painted in Venice by Sebastiano del Piombo: the Salome (or Judith) 1510 (London, National Gallery); and the Wise Virgin of 1511 (Washington, National Gallery of Art). According to this view of Cariani's very uncertain stylistic development, his art reached an early peak in quality under the direct inspiration of Giorgione and Sebastiano, and thereafter went into a long and gradual decline. But the two pictures by Sebastiano, like the earliest portraits of Titian, show the figure in waist length, and it is hard to give Cariani credit here, and in another supposedly early work, Judith (private collection), for anticipating Titian in extending the format to thigh length.

Other elements in the St Agatha — the incorporation of the narrative relief, the juxtaposition of a dark foil for the figure and arched opening to the sky, and the sensuous trails of loose hair and of the silken fringe of the shawl — similarly appear to be dependent on 'the example of Titian's works of around 1515-16, such as the Salome-Judith (Rome, Galleria Doria Pamphili) and the Sacred and Profane Love (Rome, Galleria Borghese). Cariani was clearly, in fact, an artist who developed in fits and starts, depending on the inspiration of the moment; while sometimes achieving works of high quality, as here, he equally often appears oddly inept and provincial. Confirmation that the St Agatha is likely to have been painted about 1516-17 rather than five years or so earlier is provided by the major documented work of his early maturity, the splendid St Gottard altarpiece of 1518-19 (Milan, Pinacoteca di Brera).5 The two works appear stylistically perfectly compatible in their choice colour combinations, warmly chromatic shadows and treatment of the landscape background; and none of these features are particularly close to the style of Sebastiano.

This text was first published in The Age of Titian: Venetian Renaissance Art From Scottish Collections (2004).