Martirio di Sant’Agata - Martyrdom of Saint Agatha (1520) “Oil on panel, 132 x 178 cm” [Palazzo Pitti, Galleria Palatina, Florence, Italy] — Sebastiano Luciani “Sebastiano del Piombo” (Italian; 1485 - 1547)
The story of Agata, whose name in Greek Ἀγαθὴ (Agathe) means "kind, noble", is painful and very ancient.
The young girl was born in Catania in the third century AD. and she belonged to a noble and well-to-do family: Agata was a beautiful girl, she had a slender body, delicate features, rosy lips. At that time the proconsul Quinziano had arrived in the city, who was immediately attracted by the beauty of the young woman and asked her in marriage. She agate refused because she was consecrated with a vow of virginity to the Lord, so the young woman was imprisoned on charges of contempt of the state religion.
The proconsul, unable to possess her young woman, decided to mortify her in her physical beauty.
After several days of fasting, Agata was subjected to a crescendo of physical torture, from flogging to the atrocious tearing of her breasts with enormous pincers.
This terrible martyrdom suffered by Agata was masterfully depicted by the Venetian painter Sebastiano del Piombo in this painting. Agata is together with her executioners, caught in the act of cutting off the breasts with large pincers: following numerous barbaric tortures, the young woman died in prison on February 5, 251.
The work is one of the greatest examples of Venetian painting of the sixteenth century, signed and dated "Sebastianus Venetus faciebat Rome 1520" on the parapet in the foreground.
Source: Gallerie degli Uffizi
https://www.uffizi.it/opere/martirio-sant-agata

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