Martyrdom of Saint Bartholomew

Lorenzo di Niccolò di Martino's Martyrdom of Saint Bartholomew, dated around 1407 and now in the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, depicts the apostle Bartholomew being flayed alive — the gruesome torture that became his standard identifying attribute in Christian iconography. Lorenzo was a Florentine painter working in the tradition of his probable teacher Lorenzo di Niccolò and was active producing altarpieces for Florentine churches and private patrons in the first decade of the fifteenth century. Martyrdom scenes required painters to navigate the tension between doctrinal demand for legible narrative and the visual unpleasantness of extreme violence, and this panel shows the artist managing that balance within the conventions of the late Gothic altarpiece.

Lorenzo employs a gold ground with figures in the conventional late Trecento Florentine manner: softly modeled flesh tones, clearly readable narrative gestures, and robes with Gothic drapery conventions. The executioner's concentrated gesture is rendered with narrative clarity. Color is used systematically to identify different figures.