08 Works, Interpretation of the bible, The Martyrdom of Saint Afra, with Footnotes - #192

In the late 3rd century, Afra's pagan family journeyed from Cyprus to Augsburg. She was dedicated to the service of the goddess Venus, by her mother, Hilaria.

Afra was originally a prostitute in Augsburg, and is reputed either to have run a brothel in that town or worked as a hierodule in the Temple of Venus. 

As the persecution of Christians during the reign of Roman Emperor Diocletian began, Bishop Narcissus of Girona (in Spain) sought refuge in Augsburg and lodged with Afra and her mother, Hilaria. Through his teachings, Bishop Narcissus converted Afra and her family to Christianity.

After Jacopo Bassano (Jacopo Da Ponte)

The Baptism of Saint Afra

Oil on Canvas

I have no further description, at this time

Jacopo dal Ponte, called Bassano (ca. 1510–1592) is easily the least known of the great painters of sixteenth-century Venice—a galaxy that includes Giorgione and Titian, Tintoretto and Veronese, and Lorenzo Lotto. Why this should be so is not altogether clear, for he was an artist of remarkable originality and in his lifetime enjoyed a European reputation. However, the fact that he chose to remain in his native Bassano del Grappa, northwest of Venice, and there established a family practice that included his sons Francesco (1549–1592), Leandro (1557–1622), and Gerolamo (1566–1621), and that many of the altarpieces he supplied were to churches in the Venetian terra firma, certainly helps explain why Vasari—the famous biographer of Renaissance artists—slighted him the way he did. Bassano is only mentioned in passing, with the remark that many of his works are “very beautiful” and can be found “dispersed throughout Venice, and they are held in high esteem—especially the little works with animals of all kinds.” In other words, what struck Vasari, with his Florentine bias, was a particular kind of painting that became a specialty of the Bassano workshop in which biblical themes are treated with a genre-like emphasis on domestic settings and animals. More on Jacopo Bassano

She continued to hide the bishop from the authorities. When it was learned that Afra was a Christian, she was brought before Diocletian and ordered to give glory to the pagan idols. She refused, and was condemned to death by fire on a small island in the Lech River,

After Paolo Caliari, il Veronese

The Martyrdom of Saint Afra

Oil on canvas

88¼ x 64¼ in. (224.2 x 163.8 cm.)

Private collection

Sold for GBP 2,938 in Apr 2002

Paolo Caliari (1528 – 19 April 1588), known as Paolo Veronese was an Italian Renaissance painter based in Venice, known for extremely large history paintings of religion and mythology. Included with Titian, a generation older, and Tintoretto, a decade senior, Veronese is one of the "great trio that dominated Venetian painting of the cinquecento" and the Late Renaissance in the 16th century. Known as a supreme colorist, and after an early period with Mannerism, Paolo Veronese developed a naturalist style of painting, influenced by Titian.

His most famous works are elaborate narrative cycles, executed in a dramatic and colorful style, full of majestic architectural settings and glittering pageantry. His large paintings of biblical feasts, crowded with figures, painted for the refectories of monasteries in Venice and Verona are especially famous, and he was also the leading Venetian painter of ceilings. Most of these works remain in situ, or at least in Venice, and his representation in most museums is mainly composed of smaller works such as portraits that do not always show him at his best or most typical.

He has always been appreciated for "the chromatic brilliance of his palette, the splendor and sensibility of his brushwork, the aristocratic elegance of his figures, and the magnificence of his spectacle", but his work has been felt "not to permit expression of the profound, the human, or the sublime", and of the "great trio" he has often been the least appreciated by modern criticism. Nonetheless, "many of the greatest artists ... may be counted among his admirers, including Rubens, Watteau, Tiepolo, Delacroix, and Renoir" More on Paolo Caliari

Master of Messkirch  (fl. 1520–1540)

Saint Afra, c. 1535-1540

Oil on canvas

height: 53 cm (20.8 in); width: 33 cm (12.9 in)

 Würth Collection

The Master of Messkirch (German: active c. 1515 - 1540) was an anonymous German Renaissance painter.

The so-called Master of Messkirch is named after the eleven altarpieces he painted for the St. Martin church in Messkirch between 1536 and 1540. His birthplace and apprenticeship are unknown, but he may have studied under an artist from the circle of Albrecht Dürer. From the 1530s onwards his works seem to display familiarity with contemporary northern Italian painting. Hans Baldung Grien was also influential to his work. 

Throughout the master's career his figures had Manneristic proportions. While early on his colors were bright and iridescent, his coloration became calmer and more muted in his last years. More on The Master of Messkirch

Her remains were buried at a distance from the place of her martyrdom. Her mother and her maids (viz., Ligna, Eunonia, and Eutropia) later suffered the same fate, for interring her in a burial vault.

Unknown artist

Saint Afra

I have no further description of this artwork at this time

Friedrichshafen, parish church of St. Petrus Canisius, altarpiece from the Löwental monastery

Afra

I have no further description, at this time

Meister F S W (fl. 1516–1553)

The three city saints of Augsburg: St. Simpert, St. Ulrich and St. Afra, c. 1516

Woodcut

45 × 34,5 cm

Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum

Tomb of Saint Afra in Augsburg

The abbey of Saint Ulrich and Saint Afra

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