"St. Peter the Martyr was the head of a religious sect: when on his way from the confines of Germany to Milan with a companion, he was attacked by one in opposition to his religious principles while passing through a wood, and murdered. This is the subject of the picture. The prostrate figure of the Saint, just fallen by a blow from the assassin, raises one of his hands towards heaven, with a countenance of confidence in eternal reward for the firmness of his faith; while the assassin grasps with his left hand the mantle of his victim, the better to enable him, by his uplifted sword in the other hand, to give the fatal blow to the fallen saint. The companion is flying off in frantic dismay, and has received a wound in the head from the assassin. "The ferocious and determined action of the murderer bestriding the body of the fallen saint, completes a group of figures which have not a rival in art. The majestic trees, as well as the sable and rugged furze, form an awful back-ground to this tragical scene, every way appropriate to the subject. The heavenly messengers seen in the glory above, bearing the palm branches as the emblem of reward for martyrdom, form the second light; the first being the sky and cloud, which gives relief to the black drapery of the wounded companion; while the rays of light from the emanation above, sparkling on the dark branches of the trees as so many diamonds, tie together by their light all the others from the top to the bottom of the picture. The terror which the act of the murderer has spread, is denoted by the speed of the horseman passing into the gloomy recesses of a distant part of the forest. "This picture, taken in the aggregate, is the first work in art in which the human figure and landscape are combined as an historical landscape, and where all the objects are the full size of nature. "When I saw this picture at Venice in 1761, it was then in the same state of purity as when the Bologna artists saw and studied it; and it is recorded that Caracci declared this picture to be without fault. But we have to lament the fatal effects which the goddess Bellona has ever occasioned to the fine arts when she mounts her iron chariot of destruction. When this picture fell under her rapacious power, on board a French vessel passing down the Adriatic sea from Venice, one of our cruisers chased the vessel into the port of Ancona, and a cannon-shot pierced the pannel on which the picture was painted, and shivered a portion of it into pieces. "On its arrival at Paris, the committee of the fine arts found it necessary to remove the painting from the pannel, and place it on canvass; but the picture has lost the principal light.