The Third Picture of the World

The "Martyrdom of St. Peter, Martyr" is the great chef-d' aeuvre of Titian, and classed by many as the third picture of the world. It was painted for the Church of San Zanipolo. The subject of this vast composition is the death of a Dominican monk named Pietro di Verona, who was assassinated in a wood while returning with another monk from some council of his order. He was canonized, and his tragic death recorded among the best authenticated legends.

No honor that could have been paid to this picture has been wanting.

The Senate of Venice, learning that a certain party had offered to pay eighteen thousand crowns for it, made a special decree, forbidding the Dominican monks, under penalty of death, to allow it to go out of the territory of the republic.

Domenichino made a copy of it, but the copy did not attain to the grandeur of the original. It was carried to Paris after the conquest of Venice, and there restored to its original beauty, by being taken off the worm-eaten wood, and placed on new and durable canvas.

The picture represents the martyr stretched upon the ground, helplessly extending his arm towards the murderer who is about to deal the fatal blow; but the tragic horror of the picture is concentrated in the figure of the saint's companion, who, overcome by terror, is taking refuge in flight.

The natural and skilful arrangement of the scenery, heightened by the incomparable coloring of Titian, combines to justify Vasari in saying, "Titian never in all his life produced a more skilful or finished work."

The original picture was destroyed by fire in 1867, in the Chapel of the Rosario, having been placed there temporarily while the altar of the church was being repaired. The copy hangs in its place. Some one gives its era thus: "Painted when Luther was at his zenith, it perished in the days of Garibaldi."

Titian was born in 1477, and died in 1576.