The Assassination of Saint Peter Martyr

This is a painting you cannot go and see, because it no longer exists. Titian delivered it in 1530 for the Dominican church of Santi Giovanni e Paolo in Venice, a towering altarpiece of the friar Peter of Verona struck down by a hired assassin on a country road, an angel with the martyr's palm breaking through the trees above. It was reckoned among the greatest things he ever made. Vasari said flatly it was his most complete and celebrated work. Then, on a night in August 1867, a fire started during repairs swept the chapel and burned it to nothing. What survives is a handful of old copies and prints made while it still hung there, our only witness now to a picture that painters travelled to study for three centuries.