Martyrdom of St Ursula

Copper

Probably Munich

17th century

In the late 4th century AD, St Ursula, an English queen, landed in Cologne only to find the city being sacked just by Attila the Hun. She met her end along with her entourage of 11,000 (it may also have been just 11, or even one, but this is for scholars to speculate). Fast forward a millennia, and despite her unfortunate end she managed to amass a huge following in the south German states.

This large finely cast copper panel cast in detailed relief depicting the Martyrdom of St Ursula and her virgins was likely produced in Munich in the late 16th or 17th century and was probably intended to be the door panel for a tabernacle.

Peter de Witte, known as Pietro Candido in Italy and as Peter Candid in Bavaria, was a Flemish-born artist who worked under the patronage of the Medici family before being recommended by the great sculptor Giambologna to Duke William V of Bavaria. This panel relates to his altar piece of St Ursula, completed in 1588 for St Michael’s Jesuit Church in Munich, the largest Renaissance church north of the Alps. It is likely that this panel served as the door panel to a tabernacle.

As was common in the Renaissance, the artist used one male model for all the main figures of the composition and then adapted the clothes and hair to suit the exact subject. Two sketches, held by both the British Museum and the Staatliche Graphische Sammlung Munich, show how de Witte worked through different stages of the composition.