The Martyrdom of St. Peter and St. Paul (c. 1527–1530/1531): Art, History and Details

The Martyrdom of St. Peter and St. Paul (c. 1527–1530/1531) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Antonio da Trento (Italian, c. 1508–c. 1550); Parmigianino (Italian, 1503–1540).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

The workshop of Parmigianino was one of the chief centers of chiaroscuro printmaking in the 1500s. Antonio da Trento, Parmigianino's student in Bologna from 1527 to 1531, made several chiaroscuro prints after his master's drawings. This print, considered da Trento's first collaborative effort with Parmigianino, was based on a drawing executed in Rome between 1524 and 1527 for a potential papal commission. It shows the imminent beheading of saint Paul, kneeling in the foreground, and the forthcoming crucifixion of Saint Peter, dragged away by his long beard by an executioner. According to tradition, the martyrdom of these two saints was ordered by the Roman Emperor Nero on the same day.

Object facts

• Title: The Martyrdom of St. Peter and St. Paul
• Date: c. 1527–1530/1531
• Creator attribution: Antonio da Trento (Italian, c. 1508–c. 1550); Parmigianino (Italian, 1503–1540)
• Culture: Italy
• Type: Print
• Technique: chiaroscuro woodcut (in two shades of brown and black)
• Dimensions: Sheet: 29.6 x 47.9 cm (11 5/8 x 18 7/8 in.); Image: 29.2 x 47.5 cm (11 1/2 x 18 11/16 in.)
• Collection: PR - Chiaroscuro
• Department: Prints
• Accession number: 1925.1238

A detail from the museum

The Martyrdom of St. Peter and St. Paul is the only three.block print that Antonio da Trento produced in Bologna between 1527 and 1530, as well as the most ambitious in scale and conception.

Collection credit

Gift of The Print Club of Cleveland

Further reading listed by the museum

• Goldfarb, Hilliard T. “Chiaroscuro Woodcut Technique and Andrea Andreani.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 68, no. 9 (November 1981): 307–330.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.