Saint Praxedis

The sponge and the basin

Praxedis is a Roman saint identified by an act rather than an emblem: the tradition describes her gathering the blood of martyrs, and painting names her by the sponge and the bowl she uses to do it. The sign is unusual in being a piece of ordinary household equipment given a terrible use, and it is specific enough that no other saint competes for it. Where a wheel or a set of keys points backwards to a story, this attribute shows a task in progress.

What the record holds

The catalogue dates the work to 1655. The location field carries two entries — the National Museum of Western Art in Tokyo, and a private collection — and the record is reproduced here as it stands rather than resolved. The dimensions are 68 x 78 cm, slightly wider than tall. It is filed under portraiture, both male and female, with Baroque as the style and Dutch as the nationality. The artist name given is Johannes Vermeer. The measured colour family is red.

What this page does not decide

This entry sits oddly within its own record: a Roman devotional subject under a Dutch nationality tag, and a location field naming two places at once. Those tensions are reported, not explained. Any account of how the work reached its present listing would require documents this catalogue does not contain.