Martyrdom of Saint Martina c. 1665

Antonio Gherardi made this print, "Martyrdom of Saint Martina," in Italy during the late 17th or early 18th century. Martina was a Roman martyr, and the image shows the moment of her torture. But rather than focusing on the immediate pain, Gherardi sets the scene like a theatrical stage, connecting Martina's story to a broader social and institutional context. The architecture in the background is overtly classical, recalling the art of ancient Rome. This was no accident. The Catholic Church was actively promoting the idea of Rome as the divinely ordained center of Christianity, and Gherardi's print contributes to that image. Prints like this also played a crucial role in disseminating visual ideas. The Vatican had its own printmaking workshop to circulate images of saints, which were seen as models of piety, and the social and political authority of the church was boosted. To understand the full meaning of this print, we would need to delve deeper into the history of the Catholic Church and the rise of print culture in early modern Italy. The history of art is always contingent on social and institutional contexts.