The martyrdom of the ten thousand.

The Martyrdom of the Ten Thousand Christians was a deeply harrowing but legendary historical episode. It was allegedly perpetrated on Mount Ararat by Shapur I, King of Persia, by the order of the Roman emperor Hadrian, Antoninus Pius or, according to other sources, Diocletian.

Albrecht Dürer depicts numerous different martyrdom scenes within a forest with clearings and cliffs. In the background soldiers chase prisoners over a cliff edge, in the middleground we see the torture of a group of prisoners tied to a tree, surrounded by body parts, in the right foreground a bishop (Acacius) is drilled into his right eye, and on the left a group of opulently dressed Ottoman figures impassively observe the scene.

Dürer's woodcut of this gruesome theme, emphasising the brutality of the story, pre-dates his painting of the theme, in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna (1508) by over ten years. It is an early woodcut, dating from the year before his <em>Apocalypse, </em>and both thematically and compositionally it has far less appeal to current tastes.In the painting, while it remains genuinely gruesome, he eliminated some macabre details such as the torture of Acacius. This scene was replaced by a crucifixion scene and by the presence of the bishop in chains behind it.

See: British Museum, http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?objectId=1339374&partId=1&peopl e=127877&peoA=127877-2-60&page=1

Dr Mark Stocker, Curator, Historical International Art                                 November 2016