The Martyrdom of Saint Ursula
The original, as its museum records it
Every line above is reproduced from the holding institution’s own catalogue entry, which is linked. Where their title, date or attribution differs from ours, theirs is the one printed here.
The file this print is made from
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About this painting
Her hands are drawn back toward the wound; the arrow is barely visible. Caravaggio paints not the strike but the instant after — Ursula pale, her red cloak vivid against the pallor and the wound.
The killer's face is twisted in a grimace, as if the act has struck him too. Tradition gives Ursula the symbols of martyrdom and her virgin companions; the National Gallery notes Caravaggio drops both. The arrow that accomplished the martyrdom is in her chest, not her hand.
Marcantonio Doria commissioned it; the finished canvas left Naples for Genoa on 27 May 1610.
Sources: the museum's own reading: the arrow barely visible, the hands drawn back toward the wound, the red cloak against the pallor, the killer's grimace, the Doria commission · Intesa Sanpaolo, 'Il Martirio di Sant'Orsola di Caravaggio' · The National Gallery, London, press release, 'The Last Caravaggio'. · the bystander's identification as a self-portrait is an interpretive reading, not settled fact · The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 'Saint Ursula of Cologne and Four Virgin Martyrs', South Netherlandish. · Jacobus de Voragine, 'The Golden Legend', ch. 158, 'Of St Ursula and the Eleven Thousand Virgins' (Caxton). · Richard Stracke, 'St Ursula in Art and Legend', Christian Iconography.
Printed on demand. Public-domain masterwork, reproduced from a 10,419 px master of the original. The whole image is printed — never cropped to fit the sheet — so every sheet carries an archival margin, and the dimensions and resolution listed above are the ones you receive.