St. Catherine

The statue depicts St Catherine, with a turbaned figure under her feet representing paganism defeated, and with a (now lost) sword in her hand referring to her martyrdom. The unpainted oak statue comes from the Lower Rhine region. Its master worked in the workshop of Ludwig Jupan, who had moved to Kalkar from Marburg in Hessen to complete the main altar of the St Nicolaikirche there, which had been left incomplete at the death of its previous master, Arnt, in 1492. He worked for a decade in Kalkar; all his works there – among them the altarpiece of the Life of Virgin in the St Nicolaikirche – are made of oak, while his earlier and later works in Marburg are all carved out of limewood. At the end of his life, he returned to Marburg again.