Death of Torrigiano

Catalogue entry

N04406 DEATH OF TORRIGIANO c. 1886
 
Inscr. ‘Chas. Holroyd’ b.l.; the letters ‘T’ and ‘CH’ are represented as engraved on the stone wall of the cell on the right.
Canvas, 36 1/2×47 1/4 (93×120).
Presented by General Sir Ian Hamilton, G.C.B., G.C.M.G., D.S.O. 1928.
Exh: R.A., 1886 (746).

Pietro Torrigiano (1472–1528), Florentine sculptor, is reputed to have broken Michelangelo's nose in a quarrel; later he worked in England for Henry VII (e.g. the tombs in Westminster Abbey, 1512–18) and from 1522 in Spain, where he was sentenced by the Inquisition in Seville for breaking a marble Madonna he had made, and eventually died on hunger strike in prison. The subject was no doubt inspired by Vasari's account in his Lives of the most Eminent Painters, Sculptors and Architects, ed. Bohn, II, 1851, p.488. The artist also made an engraving of this subject, which was exhibited at the Goupil Gallery, 1909 (9, opus 26).

Published in:
Mary Chamot, Dennis Farr and Martin Butlin, The Modern British Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture, London 1964, I

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