[1][2] It was painted during Gentileschi's time in Florence,[3] and is similar to her Saint Catherine of Alexandria (c. 1619), now in the Uffizi Gallery.

It is one of several paintings of female martyrs that Gentileschi made after her famous 1612 rape trial, in which she (unlike the accused) was subject to torture to test the veracity of her testimony.

[4] The figure is shown in three-quarter view with a broken spiked wheel; according to tradition this was the instrument of torture to which Saint Catherine of Alexandria was subjected before being beheaded.

Current research on the contemporaneous works Artemisia created suggests that this piece began as a self-portrait and was later modified to depict the saint.

[5] The original owner of Gentileschi's Self-Portrait as Saint Catherine is unknown, and nothing is recorded of its whereabouts until the early 1940s when the painting was bequeathed by Charles Marie Boudeville to his son.