The work is one of the canvasses commissioned by Parmesan noble Placido Del Bono for a chapel in the church of
San Giovanni Evangelista in Parma. They are mentioned (although wrongly assigned to the
city's cathedral) by late Renaissance art biographer
Giorgio Vasari in the first edition of his
Lives (1550). The subject of the painting, rather rare in western religious art, is the martyrdom of
Placidus and his sister Flavia (who had allegedly lived in the 4th century) and, behind them, that of two earlier Roman siblings, Eutychius and Victorinus, who appear to have been already beheaded. An angel flies above them and holds the palm of martyrdom. ==Sources==