The Martyrdom of St. Lawrence, Bronzino

Title: The Martyrdom of St. Lawrence
Artist: Bronzino (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronzino)
Date: 1565 - 9
Location: San Lorenzo, Florence

• Exemplary of academic styles
• Cosimo had instituted the Florentine Academy
  
• Art begins to move away from craft to a theoretical production of art
• The art is no longer about the narrative, but 'art for art's sake'
  
• Florentine artists are encouraged to build on each other's achievements
  
• moves away from conventions and begins exploring art
  
• motifs similar to Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel
• Uses "quotations" from various sources
  
• gratituous use of nudity
  
• emphasis on inventiveness
• the subject is not the focus as everyone in the painting appears to be unaware of the grave situation
• the bodies are on display, onlookers are unconcerened
• demonstrates the elevated status of artists in Cosimo's time

By tradition, Lawrence was sentenced at San Lorenzo in Miranda, martyred at San Lorenzo in Panisperna, and buried in the Via Tiburtina in the Catacomb of Cyriaca by Hippolytus and Justinus, a presbyter. Tradition holds that Lawrence was burned or "grilled" to death, hence his association with the gridiron. Tradition also holds that Lawrence joked about their cooking him enough to eat while he was burning on the gridiron, hence his patronage of cooks and chefs. One of the early sources for the martyrdom of Saint Lawrence was the description by Aurelius Prudentius Clemens in his Peristephanon, Hymn II.

Constantine I is said to have built a small oratory in honour of the martyr, which was a station on the itineraries of the graves of the Roman martyrs by the 7th century. Pope Damasus I rebuilt or repaired the church, now known as San Lorenzo fuori le Mura, while the minor basilica of San Lorenzo in Panisperna was built over the place of his martyrdom. The gridiron of the martyrdom was placed by Pope Paschal II in the church of San Lorenzo in Lucina.