Martyrdom of St. Vitalis

When the Benedictine monks of San Vitale in Ravenna saw Federico Barocci's first design for their altar, they sent it back asking for more figures. After the Council of Trent a church wanted an altarpiece its congregation could read at a glance, with witnesses inside it, and Barocci, working slowly at home in Urbino, signed the enlarged version in 1583.

What the crowd is watching is a burial. Vitalis, a Roman soldier who confessed his faith at Ravenna, is being forced into a freshly dug pit. One executioner holds a heavy stone over him, another waits with the loose earth to cover him. The judge presides from a canopied seat, an angel comes down with the palm and crown given to martyrs, and among the onlookers Barocci put a mother nursing her child.

The altarpiece was later moved into the sacristy, and it reached Milan in 1811 with the Napoleonic confiscations.