This painting is meant to be uncomfortable for the viewer, as it depicts in detail the painful and unimaginable disfigurement of Saint Agatha, a young girl who whould not recount her faith in Christ. The torturers use enormous pincers and the henchman’s knife is placed in the foreground ready for use. The artist boldly signed and dated the painting under the knife. The evil proconsul Quintianus who was obsessed with Agatha and ordered her execution stands in profil perdu (lost profile) in the left foreground, which was a Venetian style element during the late Renaissance to partially obscure a subject’s full emotional reaction. In the background of the painting is a building on fire, a reference to the earthquake that erupted during Agatha’s execution.