The Martyrdom of Saint Agatha by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo

The Martyrdom of Saint Agatha by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo

The moment after

Agatha kneels, her head thrown back and her eyes raised toward heaven. She holds a white cloth to her breast, covering the wound of her martyrdom. Behind her, the executioner turns away, and at her side a servant holds a platter. Tiepolo paints the moment after the violence rather than the violence itself.

Patron of Sicily

Agatha was a young Christian of Catania in Sicily, martyred in the third century after refusing a Roman governor. According to tradition, her breasts were cut off; she is shown holding them on a plate in older art. She is the patron saint of Catania, of breast cancer patients, and — because her veil stopped a lava flow from Etna a year after her death — of those threatened by fire and eruption.

Tiepolo’s grandeur

Tiepolo was the greatest decorative painter of eighteenth-century Europe, known for ceiling frescoes in Venice, Würzburg and Madrid. This altarpiece, painted for the church of Sant’Agata in Lendinara near Padua, shows his gift for luminous colour and theatrical composition turned to deep devotion.

Where it hangs

The canvas is in the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin and measures 184 by 131 centimetres.

About this print

Made from a 3,052-pixel photograph of the original, enough to print sharply at up to about 20 inches on its longest side.

Sources: Gemäldegalerie, Berlin · Wikidata Q50328573 · Wikimedia Commons