The Assassination of Saint Peter Martyr

The Assassination of Saint Peter Martyr is an altarpiece painted by Titian around 1528-1529 for the confraternity of the saint at San Zanipolo, the main Dominican church in Venice. The scene shows the Dominican friar Peter of Verona being attacked by an assassin, while his companion Carino of Balsamo flees. Its most striking feature is the composition: the altarpiece has a vertical format, unusual for its time, and a great tree fills the scene, seeming to heighten the drama in a way that later writers have linked to the Baroque. Titian won the commission after competing with Il Pordenone and Palma il Vecchio, partly because the Dominicans did not want to be outdone by the Franciscans, who already had his works at the Frari. According to a later biographer, Titian returned to Cadore to study the dawn light over the mountains before painting the landscape. The painting influenced later artists; Caravaggio and Annibale Carracci borrowed figures from it. It was lost in 1867, when a fire destroyed the chapel in Venice where it hung after returning from France in 1816. Today only copies, engravings, a pen study and two blurry photographs of fragments saved from the fire survive, and its loss is still regarded as a major blow to art.

Painter

Titian

Date

1528

Medium

oil paint, canvas

Dimensions

515 × 308 cm

Museum

Santi Giovanni e Paolo, Venice

Movement

Venetian school

Genre

religious art

Depicts

Carino of Balsamo, Peter of Verona, martyrdom of Peter of Verona

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