The Black executioner

Medieval artists depicted bodies as vehicles for politics and hierarchy. Repeated enough, these roles began to appear natural

by Denva Gallant  BIO

The vault of the Zen Chapel in Saint Mark’s Basilica in Venice, Italy. Photo courtesy the author

is assistant professor of art history at Rice University in Houston, Texas. Her work spans manuscripts, painting, sculpture and performance to explore how images shape cultural imagination, devotional practice, and the visual construction of race.

We are used to reading pain on the face. A grimace, a cry, a body bent inward. In the gold mosaics on the Zen Chapel vault at Saint Mark’s Basilica in Venice, the evangelist Mark is dragged across a rocky ground by chain and rope. Yet he does not scream. His mouth is closed. His features are steady. Two figures at his feet pull the rope, looking at each other, while another, nearer his head, lifts a stick as if he intends to strike the saint. But Mark appears composed. One hand rises slightly. Whether this gesture halts, blesses or merely acknowledges is unclear. What is clear is the contrast: the exertion of his handlers against the saint’s iconic stillness. The image stages violence, but it does so through a carefully calibrated tension between movement and composure. Medieval images do not simply represent events. They distribute roles across bodies. When those roles are repeated often enough, they can begin to look like qualities of the body itself.

Mark’s martyrdom, detail from the Zen Chapel, Saint Mark’s Basilica, Venice, Italy

If pain does not register on the saint’s face, where are we meant to find it? Modern viewers expect suffering to distort the body – to carve agony visibly into flesh. Medieval martyrdom scenes were not designed to record suffering in the modern sense. The saint demonstrates his faith and his power through an immutable silence before his pain. A saint’s refusal to cry out was a sign of spiritual mastery. Silence reversed nature. It showed that faith could govern the body even under torture. In images, this composure becomes a visual convention. Suffering is acknowledged, but it is disciplined. The body becomes the site where faith is made visible.

Created in the mid-13th century, the mosaic in the Zen Chapel narrates the Life of Saint Mark: his missionary journey to Alexandria in Egypt; the miraculous healing of the cobbler Anianus; his arrest during Easter Mass; his martyrdom in Baucalis, where he was dragged through the city street; and finally his entombment by monks and clergy. Mark’s body is at the centre of the cycle, anchoring the visual narrative. It first appears at rest, reclining as an angel flies towards it. The folds of his garment pool around a figure momentarily untroubled. In repose, his body is set apart. Before Mark blesses, heals or endures violence, the saint’s body is marked as divinely appointed. After his angelic visit, he stands in the stern of a small boat bound for Alexandria. One hand is raised in blessing, fingers extended, in a gesture that will recur in different forms throughout the cycle. The gesture does not simply signify piety; it activates the body as a conduit of sacred authority. When Mark reaches the city, that same hand stretches toward the wounded cobbler Anianus. The saint points toward the cobbler’s open, injured hand, and the miracle is enacted in the space between them. Divine power moves through the saint’s body.

Mark with the cobbler Anianus, detail from the Zen Chapel, Saint Mark’s Basilica, Venice, Italy

In the bottom register, Mark stands in the centre of a church, his hands raised. Even before violence overtakes him, his body organises the composition. It is the axis around which other bodies turn. In the next scene, in which Mark is dragged to his martyrdom, violence is directed at the body, yet it does not break, bruise, bloody or disfigure it. The saint’s form remains formally undisturbed. It remains recognisable, capable. This is the same body that has blessed and healed; the same body through which sacred power has moved. It retains its status as the locus of sanctity. Finally, Mark lies entombed, stilled and intact. The body is enclosed within architecture, framed and presented. The narrative ends with preservation.

The saint’s body appears privileged – central, continuous, preserved. Yet its prominence does not spare it from use. It is the body through which faith must prove itself. It must heal. It must endure. It must remain recognisable even under assault. Through it, divine power becomes visible; upon it, mortal violence is tested. The narrative depends upon a body that can carry divine authority and survive its testing. In doing so, it secures the claim that sanctity resides here – in this flesh, in this church.

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Mark’s composure is only one element in a larger visual system. Around him, other bodies strain, bind and strike. At the centre of the martyrdom scene stands a Black would-be executioner, his arm raised to deliver a blow. He is visually arresting – the only Black figure in the composition – but he is not unprecedented. By the 13th century, the Black executioner had become a recognisable type in Western art. Often shown carrying out the violent commands of rulers, his body performed the act that others authorised. In such scenes, violence is routed through him.

In the mosaic at the Basilica in Piazza San Marco, that flow is made visible. The executioner’s chain is wrapped around Mark’s neck. He lifts a stick, his hand positioned in suspended animation.........

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