The Stoning of Saint Stephen

Around 1603, small pictures painted on sheets of copper were in fashion among Roman collectors. The smooth metal has no canvas weave, so a painter could work a crowded scene as finely as a miniature. Annibale Carracci made this one then, about half a metre wide. Stephen, the first Christian martyr, kneels in a gold deacon's robe outside a city wall while men lift stones over their heads. Above him the clouds open on Christ and God the Father, as in the Acts of the Apostles, where Stephen cries out that he sees the heavens opened, and an angel dives toward him with a palm and a crown. Down at the right a young man sits beside a heap of cloaks. Acts says the witnesses laid their clothes at the feet of a young man called Saul, the later Saint Paul.