The Martyrdom of Saint Andrew

The museum calls this the Martyrdom of Saint Andrew, and the difference from the more familiar title is in the picture. The cross is not standing yet. Andrew has been stripped, and the executioners are still laying out the wooden beams he is about to be fastened to. Dolci was following the Golden Legend, the thirteenth-century collection of saints' lives, where Andrew is bound with ropes rather than nailed, and goes on preaching from the cross for two days before he dies. He signed and dated the canvas at the lower right in 1646, when he was 30, and painted it for the Marchese Carlo Gerini. He took the subject up twice more, once for a Florentine senator, once for a collector whose version has been lost. Grand Duke Ferdinando the Third bought this one from the Gerini collection in 1818, together with eight other pictures, for 1,000 zecchini, and it has hung in this palace ever since.