Copy after Tiziano Titian, called Titian
The Martyrdom of Saint Peter Martyr
Oil on canvas
165.5 x 116.5 cm
Private collection
Saint Peter of Verona O.P. (1206 – April 6,
1252), also known as Saint
Peter Martyr, was a 13th-century Italian Catholic priest. He was a Dominican
friar and a celebrated preacher. He served as Inquisitor in Lombardy, was
killed by an assassin, and was canonized as a Catholic saint 11 months after
his death, making this the fastest canonization in history.
He was
born in the city of Verona into a family perhaps sympathetic to the Cathar
heresy. Peter went to a Catholic school, and later to the University of
Bologna, where he is said to have maintained his orthodoxy and at the age of
fifteen, met Saint Dominic. Peter joined the Order of the Friars Preachers
(Dominicans) and became a celebrated preacher throughout northern and central
Italy.
From the
1230s on, Peter preached against heresy, and especially Catharism, which had
many adherents in thirteenth-century Northern Italy. Because of this, a group
of Milanese Cathars conspired to kill him. They hired an assassin, one Carino
of Balsamo. Carino's accomplice was Manfredo Clitoro of Giussano. On April 6,
1252, when Peter was returning from Como to Milan, the two assassins followed
Peter to a lonely spot near Barlassina, and there killed him and mortally
wounded his companion, a fellow friar named Dominic.
Carino
struck Peter's head with an axe and then attacked Domenico. Peter rose to his
knees, and recited the first article of the Symbol of the Apostles (the
Apostle's Creed). Offering his blood as a sacrifice to God, according to
legend, he dipped his fingers in it and wrote on the ground: "Credo in
Unum Deum", the first words of the Nicene Creed. The blow that killed him
cut off the top of his head, but the testimony given at the inquest into his
death confirms that he began reciting the Creed when he was attacked.
Dominic was carried to Meda, where he died five
days afterwards. More on Saint Peter
Tiziano Vecelli or Tiziano Vecellio, or Titian
(1488/1490 – 27 August 1576), was an Italian painter, the most
important member of the 16th-century Venetian school.
Recognized
by his contemporaries as "The Sun Amidst Small Stars", Titian was one
of the most versatile of Italian painters, equally adept with portraits,
landscape backgrounds, and mythological and religious subjects. His painting
methods, particularly in the application and use of color, would exercise a
profound influence not only on painters of the Italian Renaissance, but on
future generations of Western art.
During the course of his long life, Titian's artistic
manner changed drastically but he retained a lifelong interest in color.
Although his mature works may not contain the vivid, luminous tints of his
early pieces, their loose brushwork and subtlety of tone are without precedent
in the history of Western painting. More Titian
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