This post is three days past the memorial day of the person featured here, Saint Agatha of Sicily. She’s one of my favorite regulars in the history of Christian artwork — right along the arrows all over St Sebastian and St Lucy with her eyeballs or Catherine of Alexandria with her wheel or John with his head or . . . There is a theme here.
Starting in the Medieval period, artists loved to feature Christian saints next to whatever horrible form of violence and torture they endured as they were martyred for their beliefs. Agatha is the one with the boobs on a plate and that is hard to miss. (The painting here is by Giovanni Busi Cariani, 1516/17.) A lot of the martyred saints date to the third century, and a lot of the martyred woman saints got killed because they wouldn’t have sex with the pagan Roman men who wanted them to.
Agnes was no different. In 251 CE, a high-level pagan Roman official got pissed off when Agnes turned him down, so he had her tortured. In the most popular collection of saints’ stories in the Middle Ages (the 13th century _Golden Legend), the punishment included ripping off her breasts. Eventually St Peter showed up in her prison and miraculously healed her, but the violent part of the story commanded visceral attention and stuck with the audience, and that’s why Agnes is often depicted holding her breasts on a plate.
Her Feast Day on February 5 is still celebrated in Catania in Sicily (I don’t know how lively things were this year with COVID still a problem). And one of the special foods participants at that festival might partake in is a pastry called _minne di Sant’ Agata_, a sweet cheese and marzipan confection that you can see on the second slide. You can guess what the Italian means in English.
Sources: “Portrait of a Young Woman as Saint Agatha”, Scottish National Gallery. “Saint Agatha’s Breasts,” @atlasobscura.com/foods/saint-agathas-breasts-festival-sicily, by Rachel Rummel
