The Skin of Marcantonio Bragadin in Venetian-Ottoman Negotiations (1571-1596)

On 15 August 1571, Marcantonio Bragadin, the last Venetian captain of Cyprus, was skinned alive by order of Lala Mustafa Paşa, commander of the Ottoman forces. His skin was stuffed, paraded as a war trophy, and then used as a bargaining tool with the Serenissima. The Venetian Signoria, conversely, held Bragadin’s remains as the relics of a martyr that absolutely had to be regained and brought home. After the peace treaty with the Porte (1573), Venice realised no official agreement would bring back the relic and arranged to have it stolen. In 1575, Geronimo Polidori, a slave and a barber, stole it from the arsenal of Constantinople at the request of the bailo Antonio Tiepolo. When the precious relic arrived, in Venice the plague had broken out. Bragadin’s skin was provisionally buried in the chapel of the Bragadin family (1576) then solemnly transferred to the Basilica of Saints John and Paul (1596), pantheon of the Venetian doges and heroes. Yet, currently available studies give 1580 (not 1575-1576) as the year of the arrival of the skin in Venice and believe that the theft was an initiative of the Bragadin family (and not the Venetian state). Titian’s unfinished The Punishment of Marsyas, one of his most enigmatic works, also appears to have been inspired by Bragadin’s torture and may have been commissioned by the Venetian government itself, as a tribute to the hero of Famagusta