Terracotta relief depicting the Martydon of Franciscan Friars by (workshop of) Benedetto da Maiano, Italy, ca. 1480-1481.

The Martyrdom at Ceuta. Relief in terracotta. To the right is the Sultan enthroned under a canopy, looking down at a seated attendant on his left with a scroll across his knees. To the Sultan’s right stand two other attendants. With a staff in his right hand the Sultan points to the executioner, who stands in the centre among the decapitated bodies of four friars, with sword raised to execute a fifth kneeling in the foreground on the left. To the left are two kneeling and four standing friars awaiting martyrdom. Behind the executioner is a flight of steps leading to a loggia. Two youths, one seated on the top step and the other astride the balustrade of the loggia, watch the scene. In the left background, among the undulating hills, is a church or friary, in the entrance of which is bearded friar blessing three kneeling brethren. To the right of these in the sky is the kneeling figure of St Francis, above whom are two hands emerging from a cloud. The relief is recessed inside a moulded border.

The present relief is one of a set of three with 240- and 242-1889. They are sketch models for five marble reliefs on the pulpit of Santa Croce, Florence. Although it is not documented, Vasari (1878, iii, pp.339-40) reports that the pulpit was commissioned by the Florentine banker Pietro Mellini. The finished reliefs are part of a scheme of five which depict the following subjects (i) Pope Honorius III confirming the Establishment of the Franciscan Order (the present piece), (ii) St Francis before the Sultan, (iii) The Stigmatisation of St. Francis, (iv) The Funeral of St. Francis (242-1889) and (v) The Martyrdom at Ceuta (241-1889). A fourth terracotta sketch which can be stylistically firmly linked with the present group is in the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin and depicts The Vision of Pope Innocent III, although the composition does not feature in the finished pulpit.
The museum purchased the group from the heirs of Marchesa Bianchi Bandinelli of Siena for £437. Before their acquisition the reliefs were the subject of a correspondence in The Times. In a letter published on 5 November 1883, Mr William Mercer expressed regret that the Museum had not purchased the reliefs “now miraculously preserved in the palace of Siena of the Marchesa Bianchi, nata Velci [sic, d’Elci], an ancient Florentine house”. In a reply, published in The Times of 7 November 1883, Robinson states that the reliefs “were brought to my notice some years ago”, but were not purchased on account of the owner’s “exaggerated idea of their pecuniary value”.

Historical significance: The significance of this object and the two related reliefs in the group is in the fact that they are surviving sketches for a surviving finished sculptural monument. Stylistic and physical analysis has been able to firmly place the reliefs as sketches before, rather than copies after, the finished marbles. They are part of an important and complex iconographic scheme for a high profile commission.

This terracotta differs from its finished marble counterpart in a number of respects, among which are the pose of the Sultan, the omission of a decapitated head before the Sultan’s throne, and the angles of the heads of the foremost kneeling friars and the friar standing on the left. In addition the relief (as is true for all four) is smaller than the finished marble (the marble being 77.5sq.cm and the present relief being 66 cm x 62.9cm).
Bode questioned and Venturi denied the status of these objects as preparatory sketches for the finished marbles on the grounds that they were too similar, and were therefore later copies. Bode later recanted this doubt and they are now universally accepted as models made before the marbles on the grounds that the differences are slight and therefore likely to be the result of visual corrections in scale and perspective, when translated into marble (Boucher).
The fact that the Berlin panel, although stylistically firmly liked with the V&A pieces depicts a scene not eventually executed also gives rise to some controversy. The stylistic link places it within a preparatory scheme of six scenes, the five finished in marble and this additional composition. An inventory of the artist’s work, drawn up after his death in 1497 lists a terracotta model for the pulpit and six relief panels. This means that six reliefs were worked up as sketches (three now at the V&A, one in Berlin and two now lost) and that the envisaged scheme was altered at some stage during it’s execution, so that one panel was dropped and only five finished. Radke suggests that the original six-relief scheme was an octagonal plan, with six sides of decoration, one side which attached the pulpit to the neighbouring pier and one side to enter the structure. The hexagonal scheme which was eventually realised has a staircase cut into the pier, is entered from one side of the hexagon therefore leaving only five free for adornment.

It may follow that the Berlin panel was simply then just dropped from the scheme, however more complex suggestions have been made concerning the evolution of the iconographic scheme. Pope-Hennessey suggests that the Berlin panel’s Vision of Pope Innocent III gave way to the Pope Honorius III Confirms the Estabishment of the Franciscan Order. This is based on the similarities on the background, the Roman monuments being the same but reversed and that therefore the second is an evolution of the first, and the related themes. The Franciscans may have stipulated this because the establishment of the order was a more important scene in their history. Carl, however, in her re-dating of the works to 1480-7, suggests that the scene of martyrdom actually depicts the murder of proto-martyrs at Marrakech rather than the martyrdom at Ceuta. The former would have been more topical, the proto-martyrs having been canonized in 1481. The insertion of this more topical relief would have meant another being left out.

Niehaus and Myssok reject Radke’s theory concerning the number of reliefs intended for the scheme saying that because six reliefs were listed in the inventory, does not mean that six were initially intended or commissioned. Myssok highlights the physical differences between the Berlin and V&A reliefs, the Berlin having a sketchier style and an absence of gilding, and therefore attributes them to two different periods. Myssok gives the Berlin piece to a later period, saying that the sketchiness is a result of Benedetto’s later style developed after the marbles were completed. Boucher finds this an over-complicated thesis, suggesting that evidence of gilding may still be found if the Berlin relief were to be thoroughly examined. Stylistically he finds all four characteristic of Benedetto’s meticulous hand, recognisable as that of the carver which he truly was, rather than a modeller in clay.

This relief is one of a set of three in the V&A (inv. nos. 240 to 242-1889). There is a fourth panel in Berlin, which shows the Vision of Pope Innocent III. Together they constitute the most important relief cycle in terracotta to survive from the 15th century. They are sketch-models for panels on a marble pulpit in the church of Santa Croce in Florence. The pulpit was made by Benedetto da Maiano. The sketch-models are smaller than the marble panels and differ in a number of details. The pulpit was commissioned by the Florentine banker Pietro Mellini. Benedetto had carved a marble portrait-bust of him in 1474.

241-1889