Martyrdom of Saint Lawrence

Artist Girolamo da Santacroce (Italian, 1480 - 1556)

Date1550/1555

MediumOil on panel with tempera highlights

DimensionsOverall: 26 3/16 × 32 1/2 inches (66.52 × 82.55 cm)

Credit LineGift of Mary E. Evans and Mrs. John E. Wheeler in memory of Harry Martin Evans

Object number40-44/1

On View

Not on view

Collections

European Art

Terms

DescriptionA man (Saint Lawrence) lies on his stomach over a low rectangular grill, which is positioned in the center of a courtyard and elevated on a stone pedestal. As he is being roasted alive by the fire below, his hands are joined in prayer and he glances heaveward. A number of men and two children watch the event from the tile floor around the grill, and from a two-story stone building at the left foreground. Two men behind Saint Lawrence hold a halberd and a banner on a pole. Next to the building is a throne with steps; a bearded crowned man sits on the throne. In the background are mountains, other buildings and a path with several figures and horses. In the sky is a floating figure representing God, accompanied by four angels.Exhibition History

Exhibition History

Tenth Anniversary Exhibition, Mint Museum of Art, Charlotte, NC, October 1946, no. 20 (no cat.).

City Views, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, May 31–July 10, 1983, no. 7.

Gallery Label

Girolamo da Santacroce came from a family of artists working in Venice and the region in the first half of the 16th century. In this example, their style is characterized by clear narrative and much incidental detail. The gruesome subject of the martyrdom of Saint Lawrence, who was roasted on a grill, seems harmless as a fairy tale in the hands of this artist. Saint Lawrence was martyred by the Roman Emperor Decius who persecuted Christians vigorously, but here the emperor is shown as a Venetian doge, or chief magistrate, wearing a papal tiara. The arcaded palace in the background is also Venetian and resembles the courtyard of the Ducal Palace

Provenance

Private collection, Austria [1];

Harry Martin Evans (1859–1939), Pasadena, California, by 1937–1939;

Inherited by his wife, Mary Ellison Evans (1861–1963), Pasadena, and their daughter, Helen Wheeler (née Evans), Pasadena, 1939–1940 [2];

Given by Evans and Wheeler to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1940.

NOTES:

[1] The painting was photographed by Kunstverlag Wolfrum (negative no. 2818), a Viennese firm that specialized in reproducing works of art in Austrian collections. Wolfrum has been unable to identify the owner of the painting (see letter from Kunstverlag Wolfrum, Vienna, February 8, 1989, NAMA curatorial files).

[2] On loan by the Evans to NAMA from 1937 to 1940.

Published References

Bernard Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance: Venetian School (London: Phaidon, 1957), 1:154.

Ross E. Taggart, ed., Handbook of the Collections in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 4th ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1959), 262.

Burton B. Fredericksen and Federico Zeri, Census of Pre-Nineteenth-Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972), 93, 423, 589.

Ross E. Taggart and George L. McKenna, eds., Handbook of the Collections in The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City, Missouri, vol. 1, Art of the Occident, 5th ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1973), 261.

Renata Stradiotti, “Per un Catalogo delle Pitture di Girolamo da Santacroce,” Atti dell’Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, Classe di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti 134 (1975–1976): 250.

Bruno della Chiesa and Edi Baccheschi, “I pittori da Santacroce” in I Pittori Bergamaschi Dal XIII Al XIX Secolo: Il Cinquecento, ed. Gian C. Agazzi and Mirella Argenti (Bergamo: Bolis, 1976), 2:43, 83, (repro.).

Robert W. Gaston, “Tintoretto, the Santa Croce painters, and the ‘Martyrdom of St. Lawrence’,” Australian Journal of Art, no. 1 (1978): 9, 11, 12, 14, 16, 18, 22, 24n23, (repro.).

Ross E. Taggart and Roger Ward, City Views, exh. cat. (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1983), 9, 21, (repro.).

Bruce Cole et al., Venetian Paintings of the Renaissance, exh. cat. (Athens, GA: Georgia Museum of Art/University of Georgia, 1990), 35, (repro.).

Fritz Heinemann, Giovanni Bellini e I Belliniani (Hildesheim, Zürich: Georg Olms, 1991), 3:67, 251, (repro.).

Eliot W. Rowlands, The Collection of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: Italian Paintings 1300–1800, (Kansas City, MO: The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1996), 189–95, (repro.).

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