Agatha’s Amputation: The Disfigured Body in Giovanni Andrea Coppola’s The Martyrdom of Saint Agatha

This paper examines Giovanni Andrea Coppola’s 1650 altarpiece, The Martyrdom of Saint Agatha in the Cattedrale di Sant’Agata in Gallipoli, Italy, which depicts two early Christian torturers violently amputating her breasts—an act of humiliation resulting from her rejection of the sexual advances of a Roman general. While other artists often portray the anticipatory moment before Agatha’s breasts are severed, Coppola focuses on their removal and highlights her bodily disfigurement by depicting her already amputated left breast dangled over the saint’s head by the nipple, dripping blood onto her, in what I argue visualizes her body’s transformation from a strictly material form to a spiritual, otherworldly one through the allusion to both the eucharist and baptism. The altarpiece’s iconography is considered in light of early modern attitudes towards the body, and especially the intersection of medical and theological studies through surgical and torture treatises, in order to frame the work within its broader historical context. The altarpiece’s position within the cathedral’s larger artistic program is also considered to suggest that Agatha’s bloodied breast was only visible from a close proximity. Through mapping the painting’s sightlines within its original location, this paper accounts for how onlookers may have responded to saint’s traumatic bodily transformation, and thus connect their own corporeal experience to the saint’s. This altarpiece presents an opportunity to reconsider early modern attitudes on what constituted an intact female body, and how its elements, such as blood, occupied a blended spiritual, medical, and transformative status during the period.