Friar Angelo Ferretti as Saint Peter Martyr

Lorenzo Lotto, a devout man with strong ties to the Dominican order, created portraits of startling psychological directness. The subject of this painting is almost certainly Angelo Ferretti, a Dominican friar, from whom the artist records payment for a portrait in 1549. Ferretti assumes the guise of Saint Peter Martyr, the thirteenth-century inquisitor who, according to legend, was assassinated with a meat cleaver on his way to Milan. Crucial details of the work were revealed during twentieth-century restorations. The cleaver embedded in the scalp, painted over by a squeamish collector, was discovered in 1923. Twenty years later, the canvas’s original edges were found to have been folded behind the stretcher; when they were flattened out, conservators found Lotto’s signature on the lower left, and on the right, an inscription on either side of the palm branch: CREDO IN UNUM DEUM (“I believe in one God”). Peter reportedly wrote these words in his own blood as he lay dying.