After initial training under Justus Suttermans and Vincenzo Dandini, in 1673 Anton Domenico Gabbiani embarked for Rome where he spent three years studying at the Medici-sponsored Accademia per artisti fiorentini. There he came under the influence of Ciro Ferri, then Director of the Accademia alongside Ercole Ferrata. The impulsive handling of this powerful composition was clearly inspired by Ferri’s drawings, as well as those of his master, Pietro da Cortona. Gabbiani returned to Florence in 1680 to begin an independent career. The present drawing probably dates from around this time and is preparatory for a now lost painting by Gabbiani that once hung in the tenth-century Oratory of Santa Maria Primerana in Fiesole.

The subject of the drawing and Gabbiani’s ex-voto painting is the Martyrdom of the Santi Quattro Coronati. Representations of the martyrdom of these four saints, condemned to death in the third century AD by the Emperor Diocletian, are comparatively rare. Their images were venerated in Italy, albeit sporadically, since around 1300, but the late sixteenth century witnessed a long-lasting surge in depictions of their martyrdom, commissioned by the Guilds of stonemasons, carvers, and sculptors. The quarries around Fiesole had been mined since the Etruscan era by generations of highly trained local artisans. As their patrons and protectors, the Santi Quattro Coronati were of special significance to the city, hence the decision to commission Gabbiani’s painting for the Oratory. The Oratory itself was central to civic life and was a place of special devotion for sculptors. It is replete with works in marble, polychrome terracotta, and marble ex-votos, notably the portrait relief of the sculptor Francesco da Sangallo thanking the Virgin for her intercession.

Gabbiani’s composition in the present drawing shows a mass of writhing bodies as the martyrs—two tied back-to-back to the column and two on the ground—are mercilessly flailed for refusing to sculpt a pagan image. At the upper left, Diocletian presides over the execution. Gabbiani worked freely and rapidly, with great boldness and spontaneity. His handling was heavily influenced by Ferri and Cortona, as is clear in comparison with the latter’s Martyrdom of Saint Erasmus in the Uffizi (Fig. 1). Our drawing is similar in figure types, technique, and energy, yet manifestly Gabbiani’s in style. Whether presentation drawings, modelli, or compositional designs, Gabbiani’s drawings share three distinct features: wild chalk underdrawing (as at the right of the present sheet), robust, stocky figure types, and distinctively heavy pen lines in emulation of Ferri and Cortona. His style is at its freest and most animated when, as in the present sheet, he is in his inventive mode. A comparable example is found in his Rape of the Sabines (Fig. 2). Violent movement is conveyed by rapid and spontaneous tangled lines emerging from the web of swirling chalk—the more intense the scene, the denser and more animated his penwork.

Our drawing was at some point cut in half, as is evident from the framing lines surrounding all but the top of the sheet, as well as the shafts of light and cloud formations that finish abruptly at the topmost edge. Crucially, however, what survives is consistent with the information provided by Giglioli in his 1933 census of art and antiquities in Fiesole—that Gabbiani’s painting of the Martyrdom of the Santi Quattro Coronati was vertical in format. He also recorded that a pair of angels seated on clouds were shown in the upper part of the composition. The discarded section of the original sheet would doubtless have included the cloud-borne angels that appeared above the martyrdom scene.

The sheer number of early references to Gabbiani’s lost painting testify to its critical acclaim. It originally hung in the Oratory at ground level beneath the organ, making it accessible to worshippers. It was first documented in 1776 by Angelo Maria Bandini, followed by Domenico Moreni in 1792 for whom Gabbiani was “valente,” a powerful artist. Filippo Traballesi’s tract of 1802 confirms that it was relocated above the niche displaying Andrea da Fiesole’s sculpted Pietà, adjacent to the High Altar. There it remained into the nineteenth century, when it was praised in the early guidebooks of Francesco Fontani and Giuseppe del Rosso. Gabbiani’s ex-voto disappeared sometime after 1933, the year in which it was described by Giglioli. It was the property of the Opera of Santa Maria Primerana, the body responsible for its fabric, which commissioned the ex-voto. Sadly, by the 1930s it was in a terrible (“cattivo”) state, its surface badly cracked and its pigments discolored.

Fiesole’s quarries were a valuable source of Pietra serena of the finest quality, used to decorate major Florentine monuments from Brunelleschi’s Pazzi Chapel to Michelangelo’s Medici Chapel, but the process of extraction was extremely dangerous. Given the dimensions of Gabbiani’s painting and the context in which it was displayed, it evidently functioned as a votive offering in memory of the generations of local stonemasons and quarrymen who had died, and for those who had recovered from injuries sustained as a result of their profession. The present drawing is all that remains of what was obviously an impressive and—especially for Fiesole—a highly meaningful and valued work, before which generations of stoneworkers would have expressed their devotion, given thanks, or prayed for protection. Moreover, it stands as a valuable record of what was among the most dramatic renderings of the subject for this period.

We are grateful to Dr. Simonetta Prosperi Valenti Rodinò for confirming Gabbiani’s authorship of this drawing.