Observe: there is no blood, no wound, no instrument of torture or execution, nothing to betray the presence of any sign of physical violence. The friar’s white habit is spotlessly clean. The man looks calm, almost asleep. Surely, there is no violence to be seen in this painting for there is none shown outwardly. And yet, we see the head sunken, the body hanging low. His hands are tied with ropes to some kind of wooden frame barely discernable in the background. Perhaps he has been knocked out, has fainted, or is exhausted – or is he dead? One cannot really say. The thick bonds hold his limp body frontally to the painting’s frontal view; he is presented to us, exposed, displayed, strung up, and put on show. We are confronted with a figure stretched out on the canvas’s stretcher, extracted from the dark ground, wrapped in a succession of white folds, deep and heavy, broken and fragmented, like the saint’s martyred body.

From within the folds a paradox arises: How is it possible to convey the violence of martyrdom without showing any signs of bloodshed and suffering, to render a torn body without depicting ripped flesh and skin, or to make death an absent presence?