Possibly by Antonio Carracci, 'The Martyrdom of Saint Stephen', about 1610

A saint in a red dalmatic (a long, wide-sleeved tunic) collapses to the ground as a crowd throw stones at him. This is the death of Saint Stephen, the first Christian martyr. Stephen was a deacon in the early Church and, according to the Acts of the Apostles, enraged the authorities in Jerusalem by his preaching. They accused him of blasphemy; at his trial he in turn accused them of betraying and murdering the Messiah. An angry crowd dragged him out of the city and stoned him to death outside its walls: the stones which killed him became his attribute, as can be seen in Crivelli’s painting from the Demidoff Altarpiece. Some of the mob have taken off their outer robes to take part in the stoning, and in the foreground a young man in armour rests his hand on a pile of clothes. This is Saul, who later became Saint Paul. At the top left Christ and God the Father appear on a cloud: at his death Stephen claimed to see a vision of Jesus standing beside his Father in heaven.

The composition is based on Domenichino’s influential Martyrdom of Saint Stephen (Musée Condé, Chantilly): the right angle of the city walls, the pose of the saint and his vision of God and Christ all derive from that picture. The figure of Saul, however, is closer to Annibale Carracci’s representation of the scene in the Louvre, Paris.

The use of these sources suggests that the artist may be Antonio Carracci, son of Aogstino and nephew of Annibale (alongside whom he worked in Rome until the latter’s death in 1609). There are not many paintings securely attributed to him but The Flood (Louvre, Paris), although much larger in scale, is similar in style, especially in the background figures. If it is indeed by Antonio, it was probably painted around 1610.