August 24 is the feast day* of Saint Bartholomew the Apostle, an original companion of Christ who is silent as the grave when it comes to the Gospels** but holds a distinguished place in artistic history as Christianity’s best-known flayed martyr.

(And of course, a distinguished place in sectarian bloodshed history thanks to the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre during the French Wars of Religion.)

A fierce Bartholomew brandishing his flayed skin in Michelangelo’s Last Judgment.

Marco d’Agrate shows off his anatomical expertise in this sculpture at the Milan Cathedral, which he arrogantly signed “I was not made by Praxiteles but by Marco d’Agrate.” (cc) image by Latente Flickr.

This flinchingly realistic depiction of the skin being cut off the muscle comes from Caravaggio disciple Valentin de Boulogne. (cc) image by livioandronico2013.

This late 16th century fresco by (speculatively) Niccolo Circignani in Rome’s Basilica of Santi Nereo e Achilleo perhaps alludes to the Ottomans’ 1571 flaying execution of a Venetian commander.

* Per the Catholic tradition. For Orthodox Christians, the feast is observed on June 11; in the Coptic church, it occurs on the first day of Thout which currently corresponds to September 11 or 12.

** Bartholomew’s name does go on several apocryphal texts.

On this day..

• 1217: Eustace the Monk, turncoat outlaw
• 1781: Beata Dolores, the last victim of the Spanish Inquisition
• 1811: Five at Shrewsbury, "but a ten minutes job"
• 1792: Arnaud de La Porte
• 1851: Samuel Whittaker and Robert McKenzie lynched in San Francisco
• 1962: James Dukes, philosophical
• 1290: Zavis of Falkenstein
• 1889: Auguste Neel, on St. Pierre
• 1782: David Tyrie, the last hanged, drawn, and quartered
• 1460: The residents of Amlas, impaled by Vlad Dracula
• 1751: Thomas Colley, witch-killer
• 1993: Ruben Cantu, an innocent child?