Mark Twain simply found the statue repulsive. The sculptured figure of the stoic but skinless young man is the best known work by Marco d’Agrate (c.1504 – c.1574), who was so assured of the morbid brilliance of his work that he signed it with the carved inscription: ‘ I was not made by Praxiteles but by Marco d’Agrate’. St Bartholomew Flayed (1562), a gruesomely realistic statue of the apostle, adorns the south transept of the Milan Duomo. Bartholomew, now the patron saint of tanners, is usually depicted with a large knife and holding his own skin. Then again, the tradition of Bartholomew, which purports that he was skinned alive and beheaded in Albanopolis, Armenia (modern-day Turkey), is the stuff of legends. Saint Bartholomew (Matthew 10:3, Mark 3:18, Luke 6:14, Acts 1:13) never set foot in Milan but his statue has been the talk of the town for the past four and a half centuries.
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