The Ten Thousand Martyrs

Pontormo had drawings ready for a lunette for a confraternity at Camaldoli when the siege of Florence closed in, in the autumn of 1529. Imperial troops sat outside the walls for ten months, the republic fell, and that commission went nowhere. He carried the design over instead onto this small panel, painted for the Spedale degli Innocenti, the city's foundling hospital, somewhere between 1528 and 1530. The subject is Saint Maurice and the Theban legion, Roman soldiers who converted, refused to sacrifice, and were crucified on Mount Ararat. Dozens of figures are pressed into 67 by 73 centimetres, and a restoration in the late 20th century answered the obvious question about that crowding. The panel has never been cut down. Those are the edges Pontormo painted to.