This painting entered the Gallerie dell’Accademia in 1821 and was attributed to Mattia Preti. It was later ascribed to Jusepe de Ribera, and only in 1958 did Roberto Longhi attribute it, with remarkable prescience, to the French Caravaggesque artist Valentin de Boulogne. Valentin was one of the most talented of the many Caravaggists working in Rome between the 1610s and 1630s and his highly original compositions were marked by a melancholic atmosphere and primarily focused on exploring the “emotions”. Experts generally agree that the extraordinary realism of the Martyrdom of Saint Bartholomew, as seen in the handling of the skin and flesh in microscopic detail, make it one of the French artist’s finest pieces and it is therefore dated somewhere in the 1610s.

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