Martyrdom of Saint Lawrence

Italian 16th Century, after Luca Cambiaso

National Gallery of Art

Drawn with brown ink and shaded with brown wash, three men hold a fourth down on a platform-like heated grate as another bends over to stoke the fire on this horizontal sheet of paper. The man on the grill writhes with hands and one foot lifted high. Another muscular person in the background to the left brings a bundle of planks, presumably firewood. Seven others, including a woman holding a baby, stand mostly in pairs around the grill, some of them leaning on chest-high ledges or against columns. More people are loosely sketched beyond the low wall to the right and looking on from rectangular window openings along the back of the space. Writing in the lower left corner under the image reads, “Luca Cangiazi.”