Martyrdom of Four Saints

In the early 1520s Correggio was the man Parma turned to, and a local nobleman, Placido Del Bono, asked him for an altar picture of his name-saint for a family chapel. The subject was an odd one, the killing of Saint Placidus, his sister Flavia, and two brothers martyred with them in the 6th century, and there was almost no earlier image to copy. So Correggio invented. Instead of horror he gives the two kneeling martyrs upturned faces and open arms, more like dancers meeting the sword than victims, while the two who are already dead lie behind them. The swirling movement and soft light here point straight toward the Baroque drama Italian painters would chase a century later. It still hangs in Parma, a few streets from the domes Correggio frescoed.