Engraving
Height: Height: 155 millimetres
Width: Width: 98 millimetres
Inscription content: Signed in lower left corner of impression: "R. Sadeler excudit.". Titled and lettered in Latin in lower margin, in four lines: "S. Agatha" and "cernis, vt alternus ... / ... ne latex.". Inscribed on sheet in pen and ink at upper right "88".]]> https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1863-0509-726
Purchased from: Molini (& Green)
1863]]> Flemish]]> Engraving
Height: Height: 223 millimetres
Width: Width: 159 millimetres
Not in IFF; from the same book as 1610,0208.4.

Representation of: God
Representation of: Apostles
Representation of: St Catherine of Alexandria
Representation of: St Barbara
Representation of: St Agatha
Representation of: St Laurence]]> French]]> https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1910-0208-5
Donated by: Sydney Vacher
stamp printed in blue, on verso: 'TH.re PETIT INStt']]> Obverse: Female figure standing, facing, wearing a long dress and her hands above her head grasping a cross-bar resting on side posts. On either side an executioner seizing her breast with a pair of pincers. Background sprinkled with flowers and below a shield of arms chevronée; Inscription in legend within beaded borders, disrupted by the cross bar and shield of arms.
Reverse: high shaped pierced ridge
With wax impression.
Diameter: Diameter: 4 centimetres

Inscription position: obverse, legend
Inscription language: Latin
Inscription script: Black Letter
Inscription content: /SI.ADOLFI.DE.EPSTEI.A/RD.IN.ECCIA.TREU'
Inscription transliteration: /SI[GILLUM].ADOLFI.DE.EPSTEI[N].AR[CHI]D[IACO].IN.ECC[LES]IA[E].TRE[VERICA]U[RBS]
Inscription translation: Seal of Adolf of Epstein, archdeacon? in the curch of Trier. Siegel des Adolf von Epstein, Erzdiakon? der Kirche von Trier.
Inscription note: The Transliteration of "AR" as archdeacon is unsure. Orbis Latinus gives more options for the latin name of Trier, so their might be different possibilities to transliterate the last abbreviation.

Two wax impressions, one on paper and one gutta percha.

Identified as the Matryrdom of St. Agatha.

Tonnochy Slip Catalogue says that the arms of Eppstein are argent, three chevrons gules.]]> Europe: Germany: Rhineland-Palatinate (state): Trier]]> Europe: Germany]]> https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/H_1847-0802-7
Purchased from: Curtis
]]>
"This small, half-length statuette depicts the early Christian saint Agatha gazing heavenward with her hands bound behind her back. According to legend, the Sicilian virgin-martyr died in the third century after a prolonged period of torture at the hand of the Roman prefect Quintianus. Among other ordeals, Agatha’s breasts were cut off with pincers; these body parts became the principal iconographic attribute of the saint in early modern representations (see, for example, Sebastiano del Piombo’s painting of 1520 in the Uffizi).

There are no other known casts of this model, which has not been discussed since 1910, when Wilhelm von Bode published it as “Italian, XVII century” in his catalogue of J. P. Morgan’s collection. The saint was indirectly cast in a high-copper alloy and shows traces of a previous black lacquer. Both breasts seem to have been prostheses, cast separately and soldered into place; only the right one remains.[1] This gruesome detail reflects the morbid seventeenth-century interest in the lives and deaths of early Christian martyrs. More specifically, the half-length composition, naturalistic details, and upturned eyes of our statuette align with contemporary paintings of female saints that were especially popular in Naples and produced by artists like Andrea Vaccaro.[2]

The bronze, which features a delicate floral patterning on Agatha’s dress, likely served a private, devotional purpose. A small hole at the back of the head suggests a missing halo. The probable date and place—Naples during the first half of the seicento—allows one to speculate that the bronze is linked to the renovation of the Palazzo di Sant’Agata by the powerful cardinal Cesare Firrao, who commissioned sculptors Bernardino Landini and Giulio Mencaglia to execute a series of statues for the facade (1637–44). Their figure of Magnanimity bears a resemblance to our bronze in its elegant elongated neck and elaboration of the coiffure.[3]
-JF"]]> https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/197071
The Friedsam Collection, Bequest of Michael Friedsam, 1931
Charles Mannheim ; J. Pierpont Morgan ; Michael Friedsam (until 1931; bequeathed to MMA)]]>

1. See R. Stone/TR, April 27, 2011. The right breast is a similar alloy with the same pattern of impurities as the rest of the statuette, but with the addition of lead, which has resulted in its slightly lighter color.
2. See, for example, the painting of Saint Agatha attributed to Vaccaro in the Museo Civico Gaetano Filangieri (Palazzo Como di Napoli).
3. For Cardinal Firrao, his palazzo, and his chapel in the church of San Paolo Maggiore, which features a marble statue of the Madonna by Mencaglia, see Iorio 2012, pp. 320, 328, and throughout]]> Sculpture-Bronze
Bronze, traces of black lacquer patina]]> https://wellcomecollection.org/works/duurhum4]]> color lithograph
Sant'Agata. Vergine e martire. On verso, prayer in Italian.
1 print : lithograph, printed in colours ; image 11 x 9.4 cm]]> ]]> https://wellcomecollection.org/works/h73q7j7w]]>